Tiger & Bunny/ Incredibles crossover
Oct. 23rd, 2012 06:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lirillithTitle: Birds of a Feather
Fandoms: Tiger & Bunny, The Incredibles
Characters: Most of the main cast of The Incredibles, Kotetsu, Tomoe, and Kaede Kaburagi, Barnaby Brooks Jr., Antonio Lopez
Pairings: Kotetsu/Tomoe, Bob/Helen, Kotetsu/Barnaby
Word count: 13k
Rating: PG
Warnings: The fic begins before Kaede is born, so Tomoe's death is part of the narrative.
Summary: Glimpses of a friendship between two superhero families that lasts through the better part of two decades and sees them all through more ups and downs than they ever expected.
Notes: I used the timeline from This is Sternbild: Kaede's birth is in 1968 (I gave her a fall birthdate,) Tomoe dies in 1972, Kotetsu and Barnaby team up in late NC 1977, defeat Jake around the end of NC 1977/beginning of 1978, and the final arc of the series takes place in December 1978. The final scenes of the series take place on Christmas Eve, 1979.
June, NC 1968, Municiberg
For about four more months, Tomoe Kaburagi would be able to say with total honesty that this was the hardest yet most awesome experience of her life: standing around in a room full of superheroes, trying not to completely geek out. She was almost completely sure childbirth would top it on both counts, but for now, this was the undisputed winner.
Every so often, she'd spot somebody who wasn't just a hero but a star, and she'd kind of squeak, and squeeze Kotetsu's arm. He liked to pretend he was above fanboying, now that he was a hero himself, but he'd kind of babbled when he bumped into Gazerbeam earlier, and he was refusing to just go up and say hello to Mr. Incredible no matter how many times she poked him in the ribs.
"Okay, fine, if you're going to be like that," she whispered, finally giving up.
"I just don't know what to say! Like, 'Hi, Mr. Incredible, your powers are kind of like mine except better, what's that like?'"
"His are not even better! His strength is only multiplied by twenty, not a hundred. And having it always on has to have its downsides."
"Yeah, it must suck to have no time limit."
"And... break things..." She had no idea whether that was a problem for him. "Oh my gosh that's Elastigirl!" Talking to Mr. Incredible, in fact. She was wearing the same red sparkly mask she wore in costume, and a red and white dress. No question that was her. She was a little taller than Tomoe had expected -- even wearing flats she didn't just look tiny next to Mr. Incredible. "And I think that's Blazestone?"
"Yeah, I think so."
"I wish Antonio was here. He'd make you go up and say hello." She stopped a waitress with a plate of little hors d'ourves that were probably too classy to actually be called pigs-in-a-blanket even if that's what they were, and put three on her little paper plate. "Kaede-or-maybe-Aoi wants to know why they haven't opened the buffet yet."
"I think the plane from LA got delayed," he said. She wasn't sure if that was supposed to answer the first or the second part of what she'd said. Mr. Incredible waved at someone, Blazestone made a face, leaned in to whisper something to Elastigirl, and moved away. Tomoe popped a sausage bite in her mouth and turned back to Kotetsu; he was making small talk with Thunderhead. More time to chew, then. Medusa, one of the Stern Bild heroes, was talking to Gazerbeam. About shooting things out of their eyes, probably. She couldn't think what else they'd have in common. There was Steel Scorpion, another LA hero, and Captain Hammer, so maybe Antonio was somewhere around here after all. And Winged Victory! She tried to elbow Kotetsu, but she hit someone's bare arm instead. She turned to apologize -- to Elastigirl.
"Oh my gosh, I am so, so sorry!" she babbled, horribly aware of all the crumbs she must have all over her front, her lack of a mask, the fact she couldn't place Kotetsu so she didn't have an obvious excuse to be here at all.
"Are you okay?" Elastigirl was asking at the same time. "I mean, I'm fine, I'm stretchy."
"I still didn't mean to bump into you," Tomoe said, trying to surreptitiously dust off her chest. "I have no idea where my husband wandered off to. I was trying to elbow him. He's the hero, Wild Tiger. I'm just a civilian."
"Wild Tiger? I know someone who's been wanting to talk to him. Hang on just a second." She turned away, and Tomoe took the opportunity to brush herself off thoroughly. Her new pregnant boob size made it that much harder to eat messy foods without showering herself, and the baby's voracious appetite didn't help either. She looked up just in time to see Elastigirl's neck shrink back down to its normal size, and then her arm stretch over the crowd to tap a massive blond man on the shoulder. Mr. Incredible, who was talking to Frozone.
"THAT IS SO COOL," Tomoe blurted before she could stop herself. She tried to take a moment to get herself under control. "Do you think you could get Tiger that way, too?" she asked, sounding significantly calmer. So cool, not to mention a lot more efficient than trying to catch his attention the non-stretchy way.
"You got it," Elastigirl said, grinning. "Where is he?"
"'Scuse me, coming through," Kotetsu mumbled, edging through the crowd. Elastigirl? Talking to Tomoe. Tomoe looked thrilled, and he grinned at the sight. It was nice to see Tomoe so happy, and not feeling awkward or out of place. There were a lot fewer civilians here than he'd kind of expected, maybe because of the secret-identity thing. There was a guy who'd come with Thunderhead, and a woman with Riddlemask.
"Wild Tiger?" she asked, and he nodded.
"Elastigirl," he replied. "It's great to meet you, and I see you've met my wife and daughter. Or son, but probably daughter."
"She's totally a daughter. And I actually didn't make the introductions there. Japanese names are a little hard to explain," she added, to Elastigirl.
"Really? I'm curious, but in a second, it looks like someone who's been taking his sweet time is on his way over."
"Sorry, sorry," Mr. Incredible said, as she stretched an arm around his shoulders and reeled him in. "We got caught up with Motormouth, and, well, you can tell just from the name-- Wild Tiger!"
"It's an honor to meet you, sir," Kotetsu blurted, sticking out his hand.
It took a few seconds of crushing handshake for the honorific to sink in. "What? No, no, you're my age!"
"You've been at it longer, though."
"Just by a few years! And with the Stern Bild system, that's not surprising. We've got a lot fewer hoops to jump through out here."
"Thanks for leaving me back there," Frozone grumbled, joining them. "Ahh, you found Tiger."
"H-- Elastigirl did."
"So we've been wanting to ask you," Frozone turned to Kotetsu, "do you break things as often as he does?"
"I wasn't gonna put it like that! And I wanted to ask about the points system, too, scoring and everything."
"I don't know how often you break things," Kotetsu began.
"Constantly," Frozone supplied, and Mr. Incredible protested. Tomoe was snickering and trying, not very hard, to hide it.
"Are you asking about accidents, or on purpose?" he asked.
"If it's on purpose, it's not breaking things, it's collateral damage," Mr. Incredible said. "Like knocking down a wall to get someone out of a building? Collateral damage."
"That's good!" Kotetsu said. "I like that! Help me remember that one, honey."
"I think Tsubasa and Elastigirl and I need to go lie in wait by the buffet," she said, on the verge of giggling again.
"Wait, Tsubasa? That one's new," he said, but she kissed him on the cheek and left. "Don't know if I like that one. Anyway, about breaking things and collateral damage. It's funny you should ask..."
"So four years in Stern Bild before I'm ever in any kind of danger, my husband's a top-ranking hero, and who comes to my rescue? The Purple Panther!"
"You know, I can't blame her, though," Elastigirl -- Helen -- replied. "I always try to rescue women if I have a choice too. You save a guy, and he either starts up with 'hey can I have your number, you need a sidekick?' or he gets all macho about it, 'I woulda been fine, I could handle a broken bone,' like, yeah, you would've just hit your skull, pretty sure it wouldn't have damaged anything important!"
Tomoe laughed. "Do you think you'd ever date a civilian?"
"I dunno." Helen swirled her drink in her glass. "It's complicated no matter how you look at it. I know some women who date other supers and it's just constant drama, like Blazestone and Frozone--"
"Oh my God that was true?!"
"Shh! Yeah, it was. They broke up, though, probably for good, when she went to prison. He's seeing someone else now."
"Honey Hammond? The news anchor? He keeps rescuing her."
"You're like an encyclopedia! It's kind of scary."
"Sorry. I -- don't judge me for this, okay? -- I quit my job a couple weeks ago and so I've just been eating up hero news pretty much every waking moment. It's just that with Tiger working as a hero, we can't coordinate schedules too well, and we'd been thinking it'd work out best to have me stay home with our kids anyway, and then commuting in Stern Bild can be just a nightmare, partly because of Tiger, and after the car blew up..."
"Don't worry about it. You don't need to defend any of your choices to me. I'm a superhero and I figure being a mom's a lot harder than that."
"This part of it's pretty easy, but calm before the storm, right?"
"That's what I'm told... but yeah, Frozone and Honey are an item now. I like her, but don't tell Blazestone."
"So you and Mr. Incredible..." Tomoe grinned, leaning her chin on her hand, as Helen looked around furtively.
"I really don't want that getting around, okay? Not yet, anyway. It's still pretty new, and you know, I like him a lot, so I don't want to jinx it? And I mean, all this time I've been telling everybody, no, I don't need a partner, I don't need a sidekick, I like my independence, and no, I don't want to breed a race of superbabies or anything--"
"Who was that?"
"Gamma Jack."
"Really?"
Helen nodded. "Thinks we're superior. Supers, I mean, NEXTs. Anyway, Bob's different. He doesn't expect me to take second billing to him or anything, he's not trying to 'help me out' or steal my targets, he hasn't been chasing me like a creep for months like some supers, we just... started talking. And it was nice. And after a we'd had a couple of conversations he asked me to dinner, you know?"
"Amazing. Like a normal person."
"Seriously."
"Not like I'm one to talk, though. I mean, a rescue was how we... okay, not how we met, we met at school, but things kinda... changed after that, you know?"
"I don't think there's anything wrong with that either, it's just the ones who are all 'I've only seen you on TV but you saved me so now I love you'... mostly guys. I've gotten a couple of women who did that too, but with guys it's almost like they need to come up with some kind of way to not feel threatened that they got saved by a girl, and that's just..."
"Insulting. It's not even about you."
"Exactly! Hey, who's the guy in the weird helmet over there with our guys?"
"Oh, that's Ant-- Bison. Rock Bison. I was wondering where he was!"
"Ah, so you know him out of costume."
"Yeah, we go back to high school, believe it or not."
"Must've been something in the water where you lived."
"I wonder... Maybe I should waddle over there and say hello. Once you get him into a conversation about weight training it pretty much takes a nuclear blast to get him out again."
"There is another option," Helen said, with a sly grin and a stretch of her wrist, and Tomoe's eyes lit up.
August, NC 1969, Stern Bild
"Four unknown heroes have suddenly appeared! They appear to be in the middle of combat-- they appear to be fighting each other! We can identify Frozone, and that seems to be Mr. Incredible with him. It appears that one of these individuals is not actually a hero, but a criminal these heroes are trying to apprehend-- and meanwhile Wild Tiger has just broken through a brick wall with the last civilians from the building damaged in the blast! The third hero from the group that mysteriously appeared has now been identified as Apogee! Apogee is a former member of the recently disbanded-- we've just been informed that the criminal in question is an individual using the alias Negatide. We don't know who that is! The building has now collapsed thanks to Negatide being punched into it! It's a good thing all the civilians have been cleared out of the area! And now the Purple Panther and Wild Tiger are attempting to help apprehend this Negatide! Wild Tiger has forty seconds left of his power!"
Kotetsu could really do without the loud, extremely enthusiastic commentary right in his ear -- the headset was a new and unwelcome development, and the announcer kind of sounded like he was going to have a stroke from all the excitement -- but the countdown part was helpful. Negatide, huh? Like the guy was trying to mimic heroes or something.
"Where'd you find this guy?" he shouted to Frozone, swinging from the ice bridge to a girder.
"Municiberg! Don't ask me how we got here. You got much time left?"
"Not much, so I need to make this count."
"Get over here, I'll get you closer."
This ice-surfing thing was pretty cool, really, but there wasn't much time to enjoy it -- they were closing in on Negatide, who was wearing a black-and-white suit with some kind of fin on the back like he thought he was a penguin-shark or a weird-looking orca, and seemed to be grappling with Mr. Incredible -- and Kotetsu fired right past him, zipped into easy range of him, and got a forearm around his throat. And then he yelped as something really, really hot seemed to explode in his vicinity, and then the Panther landed on the front of Negatide as well.
"See, I didn't even know he teleported," Lucius was explaining, in the locker room of the Apollon training center. They'd dressed the visiting heroes in whatever promotional tee-shirts and track suits would fit them; Bob was dressed head-to-toe in Odysseus apparel because they went up to XXXL, since their current hero, the Cobalt Commando, was another massive man. Apogee (someone had called her Carol, Kotetsu thought) had selected Apollon and Helios because of the sun links, and Lucius had blue Top Mag gear, to Kotetsu's secret delight.
"I knew he teleported, but I didn't know he had this kind of range," Mr. Incredible said. "No wonder he's been so hard to track down."
"You get a lot of these crooks with fancy names and costumes?" Kotetsu asked. "I can kind of see why they'd do it, but you'd think they'd want to be totally anonymous, not just keep their real names secret."
"We're getting more and more," Mr. Incredible said. "It is pretty weird, when you think about it. Bomb Voyage, Baron von Ruthless, Sister Euthanasia, Dr. Chemoblood..."
"Looks kind of like you have a sunburn," Frozone said to Kotetsu. "Should've warned you about Apogee."
"Nah, there wasn't much time. I'll live, and my hat'll cover it up some." He hoped it'd fade soon; he had an unburned area exactly the shape of his cowl. He settled the hat on his head, pulling it down over his forehead, and wandered over to a mirror to check the effect. "Dr. Chemoblood sounds creepy. Does he bleed on people?"
"You'd think," Frozone said. "He's actually kind of like a werewolf, he gets all hairy and his strength increases."
"Like a hairy verison of me!"
"Yeah, but I wasn't gonna say it. He does glow in the dark. I guess that's why he picked the name."
"Doesn't seem like a very good idea to become a crook, though. 'Hey, here I am!'"
"Oh boys..." a feminine voice trilled through the locker room. "Is everyone decent in here?"
"Come on in, Fire Emblem," Kotetsu called out.
"That wasn't really an answer," Fire Emblem said, but that didn't stop him from strolling into the middle of the room. "Oh. I see it would have been a yes."
"Sorry," Kotetsu said cheerfully.
"The car's here to take our guests to the airport, unless we can persuade them to stay..."
"Nah, I'm ready to go," Lucius said. "Bob?"
"You go on ahead. I'll be right out."
"Make sure Fire Emblem keeps his hands where you can see 'em," Kotetsu suggested.
"Do I want to know why?"
"You're going to give me a bad reputation, Tiger," Fire Emblem pouted, before he followed Frozone out. Kotetsu listened for any yelling, but if Fire Emblem got all gropey, it was after the door closed.
"What's he do, exactly?"
"He has fire powers. Oh, you meant -- he's kinda handsy," Kotetsu said, settling back down on a bench and stretching his legs out in front of him. "So what's up? Did you need something to take with you for the trip?"
"No, not that, um... how'd you propose to Tomoe?"
"Oh man, you're going for it? Congratulations!"
"She hasn't said yes yet! I haven't even asked yet!"
"Well, you guys have been dating for like a year, right? And working together before that. You should know pretty well how it's gonna go."
"I guess so, but I still want to do this right. And she could always just say no. She's always talking about how much she likes her independence, she wasn't dating anybody at all for quite a while... I mean, she might want to stay together without getting married."
"Has she said that? Have you dropped any hints? You know, 'if we get married,' that kind of thing?"
"Sometimes, yeah. She's been okay with it. Really okay with it, actually." He got kind of a silly grin on his face, then he snapped back to reality. "No, I want to propose, I just get stuck on the details. If you're supposed to surprise her with a ring, how do you make sure it fits? Or that she likes it? And if you get her ring size and take her shopping for one she likes, it's not exactly a surprise, right?"
"She is Elastigirl. Her ring size could change, right?"
"She's Elastigirl, not Play-doh Girl. It'd just be like squeezing a tight ring onto anybody else, it's just you can squeeze a smaller one onto her."
"Okay, so much for that. I dunno what to tell you. I proposed to Tomoe by asking 'so when do you want to get married?'"
"....huh," Bob said.
"It worked?" Kotetsu said. "Not much help with the way you want to do it, though."
May, NC 1970, Stern Bild
"Welcome back, princess!" Kotetsu cooed, accepting his squealing daughter from Tomoe. "And queen," he added, kissing his wife.
"The princess was a champ on the plane," Tomoe said, shifting her carryon to her other shoulder. "Totally made up for the flight out, if you ask me. Maybe not if you ask the other people who were on the flight out. I hope you parked close, because I cannot wait to tell you all about the wedding."
"Wow. That good, or that bad?"
"That... incredible?" She snickered as he groaned at the pun. "Let's go. I'll tell you all about it in the car."
"So Bob was late," she said, twisting around in her seat to reunite Kaede with a thrown toy, as Kotetsu maneuvered through the parking garage. "Not ceremony-cancelingly late, but noticeably late. Helen told me at the reception they'd both been out hero-ing most of the evening, and it turns out Bob totally lost track of time, or maybe forgot what day it was. Did you hear on the news about him destroying some train tracks, wrecking the train to stop it...?"
"Oh yeah. I was so proud."
"I told him you would be! That was the night of the wedding."
Kotetsu whistled. "That's my idea of a bachelor party."
"The day of? Shouldn't it be the night before?"
"Close enough. But look at all the lives he saved! Can you think of a better way to get ready for getting married?"
Tomoe just smiled fondly. "I think you're an influence on him."
"A bad influence? I'm not so sure. I mean, he got started three years before I did."
"I'm not sure. Just an influence."
September, NC 1970, Stern Bild
"You are a terrible influence on him," Helen said, laughing.
"I didn't blow up the train tracks!" Bob protested.
"No, of course not, you just threw the bomb."
"I didn't throw it, I landed with it. It had to go somewhere! Better with me than blowing up that annoying kid. If I'd had time I would have taken it somewhere else."
"I would have done the same," Kotetsu said mildly, coaxing a hamburger's edge up to check on it.
"Exactly!" Bob and Helen said, practically in unison.
"Injuries are no fun, definitely, but compared to the alternatives..." Tomoe said. "Nobody died, right? And it wasn't like you screwed up the train lines at rush hour, unlike some people who shall remain my husband. So why all the complaints?"
"I just wish I knew," Bob groaned.
"Would you believe a guy he saved from committing suicide is suing him, now?" Helen added.
"Why, so he can pay for therapy?" Kotetsu flipped a hamburger on the grill. It was a beautiful evening, warm and summery, mellowed now that the sun was setting; you could hear kids playing somewhere else in the neighborhood. The Parrs (okay, mostly Helen) had been impressed with all the work Tomoe had done on the yard, so Tomoe was all proud and happy. They were actually using their backyard for something, for once. Kaede was toddling from adult to adult, and everyone was in full agreement that she was the most adorable kid in the world. He was ranked second for the season so far, neck and neck with the Panther, who was in first, and Antonio was a close third in his first Stern Bild season. Life was pretty great.
"That's the upside to the Stern Bild arrangement," Antonio said. "Your company covers the liability."
"We do have the NSA," Bob said. "It's not like we're going to go bankrupt personally."
"Which is good, since we still can't get used to a joint checking account," Helen added. "How did you guys do it?"
"We got married when we were twenty," Tomoe said. "We were barely used to having separate-- Kaede honey no!" Helen shot a hand out to grab the little girl, and Tomoe pounced, extracting something from her daughter's mouth.
"What was it?" Antonio asked, sounding genuinely curious. "Kotetsu, I want mine medium rare, remember?"
"I know, I know."
"Just a rock. I was afraid it was a bug." Tomoe bounced Kaede on her hip. "Are you two thinking of having kids?"
"That's a very good question," Helen said.
"Maybe someday," Bob said. "It'd be nice. But not yet, that's for sure."
"I'm not ready to step back just yet," Helen said. "I sort of feel like I need to prove I'm not retiring just because I got married."
"Who'd expect that?" Antonio asked. "Most people don't even know you're married, right?"
"Oh, other supers..." Helen sighed.
"It's that whole independence thing," Bob said. "The other supers and NSA agents all sort of got it in their heads that her being single and her being a hero were connected. Like getting married has slowed her down any!"
"Well, yeah! Now I got something to prove!"
"I swear, she's sniping my arrests now. Though she started before the wedding."
"Think how much worse it'd be if you actually got points for it," Kotetsu said. "I got a couple of well-done burgers here and YES, Antonio, the first medium rare is coming right up."
"'Bout time."
"Cannibal cow."
July, NC 1971, Municiberg and Stern Bild
"It's really not looking so good out here," Helen said. "Even if superheroics aren't outlawed, the NSA is planning to shut down all licensed super operations... we'll be back to where we were in the Forties, only now people are a lot more lawsuit-happy."
"And it's worse than that, because there's precedent for holding heroes responsible for any damage..." Tomoe couldn't help looking at the static image, even though she knew perfectly well the expression wasn't going to change.
"Good thing for you Stern Bild doesn't really care about international hero arrangements."
"Considering Kotetsu's record, yeah." Tomoe sighed. "That's such a shame. I'm so sorry, Helen. I know you were wanting to go back to work after the baby was born."
"I didn't intend to right away, but... yeah. It's disappointing. Maybe less for me, since we'd decided to have kids sooner rather than later -- I knew I'd be taking an extended break at some point. It's just... really extended, now. But Bob's really taking it hard."
"It's probably kind of... Kotetsu sees his job as making the world safer, protecting people... and here Bob's looking at being told he can't do that, right when he's going to have a family to protect. I mean, he has you, but he knows you can defend yourself."
"That's true. I hadn't really looked at it like that, but you're right. And there's nothing I can really do about it. I wish there was, but the pregnancy hormones, all of that -- I've been pretty impatient with him, because I want him to be focused on our family, and all he can think about is the lawsuits."
"I can't read his mind, but maybe that's how he's doing it, you know?"
May, NC 1972, Stern Bild
Helen was trying, very hard, to keep Tomoe's advice in mind whenever Bob got a little too obsessive about the anti-supers bill, about the moratorium on heroics, about the news out of Stern Bild. She kept it in mind when he said he wanted satellite TV so they could get Hero TV directly and not have to settle for just the highlights the local news channels ran. She kept it in mind when the law passed. She kept it in mind when he suggested a trip to Stern Bild for their wedding anniversary. She couldn't blame him for being a little stir-crazy, after all. She was occupied with Violet; he had the data-entry job the NSA had found him. She could take occasional diapers over constant boredom any day. Bob was nuts about Violet too, when he was home, but when he was at work? Of course he listened to the news on the radio, read it on his breaks, and of course he couldn't help comparing his old job to his new one.
So even if the trip to Stern Bild was a completely transparent ploy to get her interested in moving there, she'd play along. She looked up museums and parks, she packed five times as much of everything as Vi would probably need, and she even looked into Stern Bild immigration, secretly, if only to see if her vague idea that it'd be more complicated than just moving there was accurate. It was, but the hero card was pretty powerful. That was something to worry about later, though. For now, she was looking forward to seeing Tomoe and Kotetsu again.
She was a little worried about them. When she called their house, often as not Tomoe was sleeping, or just "unavailable," and Kotetsu sounded distant and distracted, especially when Tomoe was napping. Or unavailable. A couple of times when she did talk to Tomoe directly, she asked, tentatively, if anything was wrong. "I'm just a little under the weather," Tomoe would say, but she'd been saying that consistently since just around the beginning of the year, maybe during the holidays; it was a little hard to be sure when it had started.
So a visit to the Kaburagis was definitely on the agenda. Helen didn't know what she thought was wrong, and maybe it was nothing, but she was going to see for herself.
"Come on in," Tomoe said, smiling, and Helen was grateful for her superhero training; she was good at smiling on command. Tomoe was not well; gaunt might be pushing it a little, but frail wasn't. Sick? Eating disorder? Bruising on her inner arm, before her sleeve fell over the mark, but an IV didn't really narrow it down.
Bob hadn't had the time she had to develop suspicions and figure out it was something their friends weren't discussing readily. "Tomoe, you okay?" he asked, as he set Vi's carrier down on the coffee table. "You're looking kinda... peaked."
Her laugh sounded a little weary. "I've been better," she admitted. "Have a seat, though. Can I get you anything?"
"Tomoe, really, let me," Helen said. "I can reach everything in a kitchen, remember?"
"Really, it's all right," Tomoe said, but then she seemed to consider. "The glasses are all in the pantry closest to the fridge."
"Do you want anything?"
"Just some water."
Water for Tomoe, a soda for Bob -- he liked Legend cola, which they couldn't get back home -- and, after some consideration, iced tea from the pitcher in the refrigerator for herself, although a beer was kind of tempting. She could hear Bob proudly describing Vi's powers, and then going into the story about how they found out, which always came out funnier when he told it. She smiled as she wrapped her forearm around one of the glasses, carrying each of the others in one hand. Tomoe was laughing. Good.
"I'm sorry dinner may be a little late," Tomoe said. "Kaede's down for a nap right now, and Kotetsu got a call just a few minutes before you got here. He didn't want to miss seeing you guys, but I don't want to make you wait for hours, either."
Bob's face had lit up, and Helen sighed. "A call?" he asked hopefully.
"Let me guess," Helen said. "You brought your suit, didn't you?"
He nodded, a little shamefacedly.
"Where is it? In the diaper bag?"
"Kinda?"
"Is it illegal, or anything?" Helen asked. "Unlicensed heroics?"
"Not illegal, but pretty risky. If you don't do anything wrong they don't do much, but if you screw up the penalties are really severe. It's mostly for bad reasons, if you ask me. The companies don't want a bunch of untrained freelancers getting in the way while the sponsored heroes are working. Or stealing the spotlight. I guess it helps keep things from getting chaotic, but it's also about protecting their investment. They wouldn't be nearly as likely to lower the hammer on someone like you."
"Okay," Helen said wearily, "Go ahead." Bob rummaged through one of the side compartments on the diaper bag. Tomoe pointed wordlessly to the bathroom door, and he vanished inside.
"Sorry," Tomoe said. "Did I say anything I shouldn't?"
"No, no, this was bound to happen. Maybe it'll get it out of his system." But she couldn't help feeling wistful when he emerged in his suit and mask, got the location and Kotetsu's number from Tomoe, and ducked out the door. Getting out there and righting some wrongs, punching some bad guys, sounded really appealing right now. Whatever she was about to find out from Tomoe, or maybe not find out, wouldn't be fixed nearly that easily.
The ice clinked in the water glass as Tomoe set it down on the table. Violet stirred, yawned, vanished for a second at the height of the yawn, and then reappeared. "That's just amazing," Tomoe said appreciatively.
"Isn't it?" Helen took a deep breath. "Tomoe, can you tell me what's going on?"
Tomoe turned to look at her, and Helen could see she was crying.
November, NC 1972, Hamletville
Helen had broken down crying in the Hallmark store, trying to pick out a condolence card. The sight of Mommy crying set Violet off, and she simultaneously burst into wails and went invisible. At least cold weather made it easier to mask; cover her up with a blanket and no one could really tell. No matter what Bob said they were never moving to Florida.
She'd eventually gone out on a weekend afternoon, leaving Violet with Bob, to buy the card, even though she knew perfectly well that Kotetsu wouldn't care what it looked like and that she was going to write her own message in it anyway.
NC 1973, Hamletville
Helen bought a lot of cards to send to Kotetsu at intervals throughout the year. "Thinking of you" cards and birthday cards and random blank cards; it felt somehow less formal than writing a letter, less demanding than making a phone call, and didn't everybody like getting mail? She emailed him, too, but sometimes it took him a long time to respond, and sometimes she got the impression he didn't really want to respond.
It was the fact he'd mentioned, in a note he sent thanking her for the condolence card, that Kaede had gone back to his hometown to live with his mother and brother. Her heart went out to a little girl who lost her mother and her father both at once, but Kotetsu lost his wife and his daughter both at once, too, and that meant he was alone, while Kaede wasn't. Maybe it'd help a little to know somebody was thinking about him. Maybe.
April, NC 1975, Stern Bild
"The good part about the NSA program is that when I say I'm between jobs, I know it's true," Bob said, and took another drink of his beer. "It's just embarrassing, and Helen's not happy, having to deal with moving now when she's pregnant, getting started all over again -- we had some neighbors she was friendly with, we were in a neighborhood with good schools..."
"Are you moving out here?" Antonio asked.
"Nah. I wish we were, but no. I just needed to get away for a while, Helen wanted me out from underfoot, and I figured maybe you guys could use some help. But I don't even fit into my old hero suit anymore."
"There's plenty of places here to get a new one made," Kotetsu said. "Or Antonio could help you out there. He sews."
"Yes I do," Antonio said proudly. Kotetsu downed the last of his beer, smiling. Antonio was impossible to tease. "Making a whole suit's a bit much for one weekend, though," he added.
"If I wore something anyone else made, I think E would sense it and destroy me somehow," Bob said. "I'll just stay in street clothes if I stumble on any trouble. My mask still fits."
"So what happened?" Kotetsu asked. "There was that time Violet was a baby, too." The bartender dropped by, and Kotetsu motioned for a refill.
"That time, I got hit by a car. Not really my fault, you know? This last time, I had a couple of slip-ups, breaking things and bending doorknobs, stuff that people were noticing, but the big one was punching through a wall -- there was an armed robbery going on, I could feel one of the gunmen getting antsy and getting ready to shoot, and I couldn't just let it happen."
"Helen has to get that, right?" Kotetsu said. "She was in the same line of work."
"She does, but she didn't have the danger-sense, you know? It's not quite the same. She always had to be on the lookout for trouble, and even though she knows that's not how it worked for me, she doesn't get it. She wants me to just stop looking for it, and I tell her, I don't, it finds me, and she thinks I'm just making excuses. And this time, I dunno. Maybe I could have been more subtle about it. This was pretty bad. I was even on surveillance tapes. So we have to move to a new place where we won't compromise any wiped memories, they pull some strings to get me a new job, and I have to go back to keeping my head down. I tell ya, sometimes I wish I had a time limit like you do."
"Wanna trade?" Trade powers, trade places... that was not a good rabbit-hole to consider. No chance to be a hero, just a living wife, an ordinary family. Or heroics, and being completely alone. And his promise to Tomoe... Kotetsu took a long swig of his beer.
"You ever think of moving out here?" Antonio asked. Bless him.
"Constantly. Helen was willing to consider it for a while, but now with our second on the way she's not so sure. Thinks it'll be good for the kids to have open spaces to run around, a big backyard, that kind of thing. Stern Bild suburbs are way out of our price range, especially since we wouldn't have NSA support to move here."
"You've got the wrong guys to argue with you on that," Antonio said. "We both grew up in the country."
"Yeah," Kotetsu agreed. "I mean, we were going to raise Kaede here, but... I dunno. I guess you use parks a lot more, if you live in the city. Play sports instead of just running all over the place. That kind of thing."
"Mm," Bob agreed, but he didn't seem to be paying attention. Kotetsu took a long drink of his beer. It hurt less than it used to, but that didn't mean it stopped hurting. They'd been building a life around themselves, a life where Kaede could figure-skate and he could drop in on her practices, where she'd have her mother's help with her homework, all the opportunities a giant city had to offer -- the opportunities he'd thought he could reach when he ran away at ten, that they actually had found when they moved here after high school -- and now Tomoe was gone and Kaede was growing up exactly where he did, sleeping in the same bedroom, going to the same school, in an enclave of people who thought they were all pretty much alike, more alike than they were different. That was great until you turned out to be different, and then you didn't belong anymore. Would she have been better off here, going to a school where no one knew how to pronounce her name, learning that there were all kinds of people in the world, all kinds of everything, going to world-class museums on her field trips, learning how to take cover when the hijackers fired into the air?
"Why do you guys do this?" Bob finally asked. "Helen's all, it's not about helping people anymore, you're just an adrenaline junkie. I'm not saying that's not part of it, but that's not the only reason. I like helping people! It's not like I ever get to in the kind of civilian work I'm doing."
"Exactly!" Kotetsu said, roused out of his thoughts. "It's about protecting people. If I just wanted an adrenaline rush I'd go skydiving."
"I wouldn't," Antonio said, and Kotetsu elbowed him. "But it's like being a cop or a fireman -- it's all part of the package. Helping people and going into danger kinda go hand in hand."
"Respect, too," Kotetsu said. "All of it. Sure, you miss the rush, and the fame, but that doesn't mean you don't miss the, uh, the helping-people part of it too."
"Yeah, exactly. Hey, can you tell Helen that?" He pulled out his cell phone and Kotetsu snatched it out of his hand.
"You nuts? It's after midnight. You don't drunk-dial your own wife!"
"I'm not drunk! And why would I call anybody else's wife?"
"You still don't call your wife drunk after midnight."
"Yeah, even the single guy can tell you she's not going to want to listen if you do that."
"Okay, you're right, but I'm not drunk."
"Okay," Antonio agreed, cheerfully. Kotetsu had his doubts -- Bob had been putting them away pretty quickly, but he was a big guy, Antonio-sized, so Antonio would probably know. Kotetsu passed him back his phone, and Bob pocketed it.
"So if I can't move out here, at least I can bask in somebody else's glory. Tell me what you've been up to."
"Arrests and stuff? Kotetsu had a good one last week. The carjacking?"
First good one all season, but yeah, it had been pretty good. "Okay, so it was this gang of bank robbers all wearing animal masks, and the guy in a gorilla mask breaks away from the others and cuts across the freeway while Fire Emblem's rounding up his buddies. He just runs into traffic, finds one car that braked to avoid hitting him, and threatens the driver to get her to drive him, I dunno where. I swing over to their side and jump onto the car--"
April, NC 1978, Burbsville and Oriental Town
"Hey, Bob, what's up?"
"About what you'd expect... we're getting settled into Burbsville, getting to know everybody."
"I don't think I ever heard why you had to move this time."
"Got mad at my boss and accidentally snapped my desk in two. I might have been able to cover for that if I'd had a second to think, but in a cubicle... there were a dozen people there before I knew it. And finger-shaped dents in the the edge."
"Ouch."
"Could've been worse. It happened in the summer, so we didn't have to pull Vi out of school, and it was just between kindergarten and first grade -- she didn't have a whole bunch of friends she couldn't bear to leave."
"Yeah, it's easier to make friends at that age, I think. Maybe it just seemed that way to me because it was before I got my powers."
"This'd normally be my 'bowling night' with Lucius, but he and Honey are out of town. So I figured I'd call somebody who's still in the business."
"Oh, right, bowling night's a cover story." Kotetsu scritched at his beard. "And you don't have an excuse to leave without him. So it's not just that you're used to working with a partner now."
"Y'know, I never looked at it that way, and we've been doing this off and on since before Dash was born. Guess it makes sense you'd see it like that, though."
"Heh, yeah. Can't deny it."
"How's all that going now?"
"Pretty good," Kotetsu said, glad for once the Parrs didn't have video phones. His mother had accused him of having a silly grin on his face the last time he talked to her about Barnaby. He was just happy. It felt so good to work so well with someone, especially after you'd felt like you'd never be able to work with him at all. It felt good to see Bunny smiling when there wasn't even a camera anywhere near him, to see him so calm and relieved; he hadn't even realized how tightly wound his partner had been before until he saw the contrast after they'd defeated Jake. "Amazingly good, if you're looking at my points. I mean, that's not the part I've ever cared about, but it's making my bosses happy."
"Wasn't this Bunny guy kind of a point-hound? Is that part of it?"
"Nah, it's not that. I mean, he was, but he's stopped harping on all that, and things got better with him well before things got better with my standing." He sat up, feeling like he needed to explain this more. "It's like that whole... he was focused on winning no matter what, and now he's focused on playing the game. But because he's so focused on playing well, we win anyway. But it'd be okay even if we didn't, because we're playing the best we can."
"Well, good. Good to hear it."
"And what's up with you and the family?"
"Oh, you know, the usual. Vi's in school now, we managed to teach her how to control her powers enough that she doesn't vanish involuntarily anymore. She's shy enough she still abuses it a little, but hopefully with time..."
"That's gotta be rough," Kotetsu said. "When you have a power that you really want to use? I mean, you and me, any power accidents just get us in trouble."
"Hers are only going to keep her out of trouble until someone notices the floating clothes," Bob said. "After that, it's bigger trouble than ever. Convincing a little kid, though... And Dash is getting into everything. We don't know how he does it."
"He's, what, two, two and a half? That's just how it is at that age."
"I don't remember Vi being that bad, but she was such a quiet baby. Dash is kind of a hell-raiser." Bob just sounded proud, though, and Kotetsu smiled, a bit sadly. He never had as many stories to tell about Kaede, even talking to her nearly every night; too many of his stories were arguments, times he'd let her down, times she was mad at him, or mad about something else and taking it out on him. Violet had grown out of the 'oh yeah, when Kaede was that age' stories two years ago; pretty soon Dash would, too.
January, NC 1979, Burbsville
Bob had rehearsed this. Helen had made sure of that. "Don't go calling him just because you're disappointed you're losing a link to the hero business," she'd said. Several times. "He's still our friend, and you should call him if you're legitimately concerned, not just because you want to trade war stories, okay? He's bound to have mixed feelings about all this, so don't step on his toes."
"Maybe I should leave it to you," he'd finally said.
"Maybe you should!"
"I just want to see how he's doing, okay?"
"That's okay. That's great! That's the right reason to call him. That's what I've been saying all along."
"Okay. I'm going to go call him, then."
"Okay! Go call him!"
So he was half-laughing at how ridiculous marriage could be as he dialed. Helen popped her head into the room to pass him a note -- Get his new address! -- and he nodded, gave her a thumbs-up. She returned it and slipped back out.
"Hello?"
"Hey, Kotetsu. It's Bob. Retiring, huh?"
"Yep. You get the whole story? The power loss and everything?"
"Yeah. News here made hay with it -- see, supers could just start losing their powers at any minute--" which was exactly the kind of thing Helen didn't want him bringing up, so he faltered to a stop.
Kotetsu sighed. "I would have thought it'd bother me more than it does, you know?"
"What, losing your powers, or the part where I just put my foot in my mouth?"
"The second one," Kotetsu said, laughing a little to take the sting out of it.
"It could've been anybody. Other supers have lost their powers. You were just the first to make a public announcement about it. I'm almost surprised you're not sticking with it, you know? With those armor suits, you've got durability covered without any powers involved. I don't remember how much you could lift unpowered, but there are plenty of supers without super-strength, right?"
"Huh. I didn't know that. Me being the first, I mean. I'd heard about.... one other. Didn't know there were that many more not talking about it."
"It was the whole NSA thing -- a lot of open secrets there. I guess you get that a bit less with Hero TV, since you're all rivals. All but you and your partner. People play it closer to the vest?"
"It's weird, though. Officially we're rivals, but we work together a lot, especially when it comes to things like this. Or-- did you hear the part about me being framed for murder?"
"What?! No! What?"
"It's a really long story--"
"Those are the best kind!"
July, NC 1979, Burbsville
A woman with a bobbed flip of auburn hair lifted her arm to wave, and Kotetsu waved back. Barnaby glanced around the park. There were other people around, but none close at hand; a clutch of young people tossing a frisbee, some children on the playground equipment some distance away, but no other families amongst the picnic tables yet. It'd be safe to talk about hero business and powers for a bit longer. Wonderful, he thought. But that was selfish. He wanted to forget all about it, sometimes, because everything associated with Hero TV made him think of Maverick, but Kotetsu felt very differently, and this was one of his only outlets, really. This couple were retired heroes, just like he and Kotetsu were, and from what Kotetsu had said, the husband -- Bob -- was just as reluctantly retired as Kotetsu, though for a different reason. So they'd understand like few others.
Bob Parr was a huge man, powerfully built under the weight he'd clearly put on in retirement, and his handshake ground bones together; Barnaby powered up reflexively in self-defense, and that broke the ice nicely, sending Kotetsu and Helen off into gales of laughter and leaving both Barnaby and Bob laughing sheepishly as well. Helen hugged Kotetsu, Bob shook his hand carefully, and when Barnaby reached out to shake hands with Helen she grinned. "I think I'll wait till you're done glowing," she said. "Even if I could take it better than most."
"Practice?" he asked.
"Kotetsu didn't tell you? I used to be Elasti-girl."
He cast his mind back; he'd only really paid attention to heroes insofar as they were involved with investigating and combating crime syndicates, but he'd tried to stay aware of the international headliners in case of any developments on that front. He placed her around Kotetsu's age, so the time frame was right, as was her appearance. "I wouldn't so much crunch bones as squish them, then."
"I'd still rather pass if that's okay," she said. "Let me introduce you to our kids!" Violet, a dark-haired girl of maybe seven with her finger holding a place in a surprisingly thick book for her age, and Dash, a boy of four or five with a shock of blond hair. Violet didn't stir from the picnic bench where she'd been parked when they approached and barely glanced up at them, while Dash appeared to be sizing all of them up even as he fidgeted. His attention seemed fixed most on Kaede.
"Wanna race?" the boy asked her. "Winner gets the loser's dessert?"
"Seriously?" Kaede said, skeptically. The boy came up to about her waist.
"I'm really fast," he said, with obvious pride.
"Dash..." Helen began, in warning tones.
Kaede eyed him for a moment, then seemed to a decision. "Shake on it," she said, holding her hand out. Barnaby saw Bob open his mouth to say something, and Helen's arm stretched to put a finger to his lips; Barnaby glanced at Kotetsu, who shrugged. The two children shook hands vigorously, then ceremoniously went about setting up the race -- a line drawn in the dirt, an agreement to run to the parking lot and back, and Kotetsu designated as the race starter. Kotetsu counted down, and on "Go," there was a sudden breeze that ruffled everyone's hair. Within ten feet, they were practically a blur; well before they'd reached the parking lot they'd vanished.
"Wait, wait, so Kaede--?" Bob asked, as Kotetsu said, "Wait, Dash has powers?"
"Bob, don't tell me you forgot," Helen protested. Over on the picnic bench, the girl ducked her head and went transparent; a heap of clothes behind a floating book. She'd been watching.
"Someone please tell me what's going on," Barnaby said calmly, once the others had stopped.
Considering that Dash had super-speed, and now so did Kaede, Barnaby was surprised they managed to finish the explanation before the kids returned, and the secondary explanation as to why Helen had let it happen -- "If you ask me, it'd do him some good to lose a race," she said. It was at least a couple of minutes before they came back, though, both somewhat out of breath.
"She cheated!" Dash complained, between gasps.
"I cheated?" Kaede objected. "You were going to race me using your powers without telling me you had them!"
"I wasn't going to use all of them like you did!"
"You were still planning to win."
"Well yeah!"
"I dunno, Kaede, it does seem kinda unfair," Kotetsu said. "You're a lot taller than him. Longer legs. With the same powers of course you're gonna beat him."
"No, no, she's not wrong," Helen said. "Dash wasn't being honest."
"I didn't lie," Dash protested.
"Kaede shouldn't get his dessert, though," Kotetsu said.
"I don't want his stupid dessert! I don't even know what it is."
"How far did you both go?" Barnaby asked.
Getting a conclusive answer to that turned out to be a challenge, but one that, entirely by accident, smoothed over the hard feelings. Neither of them could estimate the distance, and identifying landmarks took some discussion. Kaede didn't know the area well, and parts of their route been blurry to her. While Dash might have recognized familiar locations and been better equipped to recognize his surroundings at high speeds, he was too young to clearly explain what he'd seen; "the pink hospital" meant nothing to Barnaby. Bob, wanted to see if he could clear it up, and since he'd know both the local landmarks and his son's speech patterns, he seemed the best choice. Barnaby relinquished his phone, Helen and Kotetsu took over the grill, and Barnaby, feeling extraneous after he'd explained the map application, drifted over to the cement picnic table and bench.
The little girl scooted away from him, but lowered her book, and he smiled faintly. "Just pretend I'm not there," he said. "I always hated being interrupted while I was reading."
"Mom says it's rude to read when you have guests," she said.
"I'm not really your guest. Your parents' guest, maybe." Don't do it, he told himself. You hate having it done to you. But he couldn't resist. "Can I see what book you're reading?"
Mutely, she lifted it from her lap to show him the cover. A Nancy Drew mystery; the cover didn't trigger any memories, but he recognized the style. "I'm surprised to..." To see you reading such a difficult book for your age. He trailed off, awkwardly. No way to say it without sounding patronizing. How did people talk to children? Did they just not care that they were being patronizing? With Kaede, he tended to speak to Kotetsu as much as to her, and they could always roll their eyes together when he did something exasperating.
"I read above my grade level," she said, gravely.
"I can tell," he said. "I loved mysteries like that when I was your age." Had he read books that long when he was her age? Maybe he'd been older. How much of this was normal forgetfulness and how much was Maverick, and when would the SSRIs save him from the train of thought that always followed from that? He'd liked mysteries. He knew that. He'd liked the idea of young people being able to put together the pieces where the police, the adults, had failed. The reasons were painfully transparent now. If Maverick had encouraged it, encouraged the whole obsession, that didn't change the fact that the interest had started with him.
"Nancy Drew?" Violet asked skeptically. "Isn't she for girls?"
"Is there a reason boys shouldn't read her?" She put her finger in the book, apparently giving it some thought. "I read every mystery I could find," he continued. "It didn't matter who the main character was." Had he read the one she held now? Maybe he'd just never found that one; it hadn't been at the library, or bookstore, or... where had he found books when he was a child? In the silence, he tried to pull his mind off that track, away from the blanks he could never fill in, like his therapist was trying to teach him. Pay attention to what's around you, not just what's in your head.
"We have our own grill, but it's buried somewhere in the garage after the last move," Helen was telling Kotetsu. "And we figured Dash would want some room to really build up some speed, so that's why we picked the park. I wasn't really expecting him to challenge Kaede, but I guess I should have! We'd love to show you the new house, but it's a mess right now -- you know how it is when you move, boxes everywhere even six months later..." Dash and Kaede were at the starting line, again; it looked like they'd buried the hatchet over the racing arrangement. Maybe they'd settled on a handicap, because Dash ran into invisibility before Kaede did. Bob still had Barnaby's phone. Had he found the stopwatch app?
"You have powers too, right?" Violet asked, out of the blue. He looked back at her; she'd tucked her hair behind one ear and was watching him intently.
"Yes, I do," he said. "So do my partner and his daughter." My partner. Even if they weren't heroes anymore. Maybe he should stop thinking of Kotetsu that way, let him go on with his own life without the tie to someone with as many problems as Barnaby had, but no other word came close to the way he felt about the older man. None he was brave enough to use, yet.
"Do you ever forget and use your powers by accident?"
He shook his head, no, but then he realized what she was probably really wondering. "Not anymore," he amended. "When I was your age, sometimes I did, when I was upset. And when I first got my powers, I was a baby, and I used to abuse them all the time. If my mother put me in a playpen or carrier so she could do something, I'd use my powers to break out." Hundred Power, at the onset, didn't seem to have the hour-long cooldown period; Kotetsu had had the same problem in childhood, and Kaede, when she copied his powers.
"Mom says I used to vanish when I cried," Violet said. "When I was a baby. And now I can kind of...." She laid the book down on the bench next to her, face-down and open to her place, and brought her hands together. "I can make bubbles."
The sphere she created and held between her hands did indeed resemble a bubble. The transparent shimmer was more purple than any other color, not iridescent, but the effect was much the same. "Interesting," he said. "Can I touch it?" She nodded. It didn't pop at his touch; it gave a little, then bounced back, and further pressure found no give at all. It was like the resistance of a strong blast of air, not any solid surface. "A force field," he said. Like Jake's. Jake had adapted his into weapons, while Violet had, in infancy, bent hers around her to make herself invisible. "Can you make them any larger than this?"
She shook her head. "Not yet. But I'm practicing. Is that bad?"
"I don't think that's bad at all," he said. "You should know your own abilities." But she was a child, not an adult, and the US was different from Stern Bild. "You should listen to your parents, of course. If they put any restrictions on how or where you use your powers, you should abide by those. But if you're careful and you're not hurting anyone, I think you should be fine."
"I'm really careful," she said. "I only practice at home, in my room. Except for right now."
"You have a very impressive power," he said. "Very versatile."
She shook her head. "I can't do anything with the bubbles, and even when I disappear people can see my clothes."
"You're still young," he said. "Your powers are still developing."
"You think so?"
He nodded, and she smiled, shyly, ducking her head. Which had come first, he wondered, her powers or her shyness? Were personalities shaped by powers, or did people develop powers to fit their personalities? Origami with his gift for mimickry and discomfort in his own skin, Kaede learning to emulate people she admired, Shrinking Violet here using powers to conceal herself that others would use for violence.
"Food's ready," Kotetsu called out. "Once the speed demons get back, anyway."
"Should be any second--" Bob began, before his son careened into his legs. "---now."
February, 1980, Stern Bild and Burbsville
"Hey, Kotetsu. Bob's at work right now."
"No, I figured he would be. I was wanting to talk to you."
"He's not holding a grudge or anything, you know? About you being back in the business." Not that she could tell, anyway. "We joked about your five-minute retirement, sure..."
"It was a whole year! That's a long time when you're bored!"
"I know, I know." She turned off the water in the sink. Being a housewife was pretty boring, now that Dash was in preschool; it was different when she was chasing a super-speed toddler. Pretty soon he'd be going to school for full days. She'd be one of those moms who brought homemade things to all the class parties and irritated the ones with less time on their hands. "What did you need to talk about?"
"I was just, um, wondering about... Valentine's. Like, what you'd get for a guy for Valentine's."
"What do you mean?" Surely he and Tomoe had celebrated it, right? Even if they'd been pretty busy between active-duty heroing and having a young child. Was he trying to analyze an ambiguous gift from a friend? It was a little early for that, though.
"I mean... what do you usually get Bob for Valentine's Day?"
"Um," she began. For a while it had been sexy lingerie on her, but she'd had a little trouble losing the baby weight after Dash and she'd let that tradition slide for a while, much to Bob's disappointment. Then Dash developed his powers and chasing him took off a jeans size. "Why are you asking?"
"It's just, you know, I know the kind of thing I used to get Tomoe, chocolates she liked, flowers, but I don't know if it's okay to give that kind of thing to a guy, or if flowers would be too feminine or something, and I really don't want to screw this first one up because Bunny and I are kind of seeing each other now," he said, picking up speed as he went along until the last phrase came out all in a rush.
"Wow," she said. "That's... not what I was expecting! I was going to say it depends on the guy, but you weren't just asking in general, so... You know what he likes, right? I give Bob chocolates sometimes. Or bake things he likes."
"Sorry," he said. "I didn't really tell people for a long time, because it didn't matter, and now all of a sudden it, uh..."
"It's nothing to apologize for! I'm just glad you found somebody again. You seemed so lonely for such a long time." He was silent for long enough she realized he was having a hard time responding. "So this is pretty recent, huh?"
"Yeah."
"So I guess sexy lingerie is out."
"I don't even know how that would work on me."
"I'd say I have some ideas, but I'm a married woman." She smirked to herself as he spluttered. "Does he like chocolate? Flowers?"
"Not really. He doesn't really like... stuff. At all. I mean, he gets everything digital, books and movies, music, all of that. Has a built-in sound system in his apartment, so he doesn't even have a stereo."
"Hmm. Romantic dinner, then? Make reservations someplace nice?" Wait, Valentine's was only a week off. A lot of places might be booked up already. "Or cook him something at your place. Candles, music..."
"Candlelit fried rice."
"You can cook other stuff! Can't you?"
"Spaghetti? With sauce from a jar. Cold cereal?"
"Okay, catering. Mini-catering. Order take-out from someplace good and plate it up so it looks nice."
"Hmmm. Yeah, I think I know a place! Thanks, Helen. You're a lifesaver."
"No problem! Hey, is it okay if I tell Bob?"
He hesitated. "Sure. You don't think he'll be... freaked out or anything?"
"Nah." Though she might have to spend a little time hammering the whole idea of bisexuality into his head. Bob was pretty black-and-white about things sometimes. She could hear it already, but he was crazy about Tomoe, like that had to have changed. "Like I said, it's just good you've found somebody. Doesn't matter who it is. Bob worries more about you being single than I do, I think."
"Really? He never said..."
She laughed. "Men. It figures. Seriously, he'll be happy for you." Once he got the idea.
"Okay." He took a deep breath. "Thanks again. I need to go make some calls and get started cleaning, I think."
"No problem. Go get 'em, Tiger."
October, 1982, Stern Bild and Burbsville
"Hello?"
"Oh, hey, Barnaby. It's Bob Parr?"
"Oh, yes. Mr. Incredible."
Bob winced. "You have no idea how glad I am my wife can't hear you call me that right now."
"Oh. That sounds... ominous. Just a moment, here's Kotetsu."
Bob could hear, faintly, the sound of Kotetsu's "what happened?" and Barnaby saying something about "the Parrs." Of course Kaede would be his first worry. "Hey, Bob. What's wrong?"
"Another move..." Bob said, grimly, and he heard the creak of a couch as Kotetsu sat down.
"What was it this time?"
"'Bowling night' kinda blew up in my face. Well, both our faces, but Lucius and Honey don't have any kids needing to transfer schools..."
"Uh-oh."
"Sorry, I wasn't calling to dump on you. I just needed to let you know the new address, because Helen wasn't really sure where to send it -- are you and Barnaby living together yet?"
"Not quite, but thinking about it. I leave stuff at his place, he leaves stuff at mine -- you know how it is."
"It's a distant memory," Bob said. "So which address is better for mail?"
April, 1985, Metroville
HHelen had sworn that every time Bob forced them to move, notifying everyone was his job, but with their house reduced to a smoking crater, she couldn't resist. Until they picked out a new place, they wouldn't have a landline or a permanent address, so she settled for sending out an email with a photo of the wreckage, a short explanation, and their temporary contact information, to everyone who was in the loop on their old line of work.
"Kotetsu still hasn't stopped laughing," Barnaby told her, over the phone. "Something about Bob winning forever. You seem in better spirits than I would have expected."
"It looks like we might actually be cleared to come out of retirement," she said. "And at this point I'm just happy we're all alive and in one piece, you know?"
"I understand completely," he said, with feeling. "Would you like to talk to Kotetsu? If he can contain himself?" He raised his voice a bit for that last, and she heard Kotetsu's indistinct protest.
"I should really get going," she said. "My sister always worries, and I wasn't able to get hold of her earlier. Just let him know we might be back in action. Or Bob will, when we get word."
"I'll let him know."
June, 1985, Stern Bild
The Parrs were the first guests to arrive. "I hope we're not too early," Helen said, when Barnaby and Kaede let them in.
"Not at all! Kotetsu and Antonio are out back," Barnaby said. "Let me show you the house before everyone else arrives."
To Kaede, this family wasn't the set of treasured old friends her dad knew; they were a group of people she'd met once, a little kid she'd half-babysat, and a series of Christmas cards, a birth announcement, and a couple of address-change cards over the years. They were also the Incredibles, the first new (or partly-new) group of heroes to emerge since the US ban on heroics had been lifted, and that was a lot more interesting to her.
She'd known they had powers, back when she met them the last time, but either she'd missed the part where they used to be heroes, or hadn't much cared. She'd been ten or eleven back then, and the fact she'd met the Stern Bild heroes, helped save them, was still so distant and crazy it felt like a dream sometimes; she didn't just assume her dad's friends were heroes, especially since she'd no sooner learned he was a hero than he retired and moved back home.
And that had been the summer he was retired, so she was still just dealing with the fact that her dad -- her distant, lying, promise-breaking dad, who baby-talked her and forgot things and mailed her a stupid creepy Mad Bear toy after they nearly blew up the city -- was a hero who'd risked his life and gone through hell for everybody's sake, and yet he was also a big, silly kid who watched a lot of TV and bought candy bars whenever they were in a checkout line and actually cheered when he made a basket with something he threw at a trash can. Barnaby, handsome and cool and good at everything, was actually no good at a lot of things, like understanding references to TV shows or listening to music written in the last hundred years. It had been a lot to adjust to all at once, so no wonder she barely paid attention to a family with two heroes who'd retired when she was practically a baby. Dash was the main one she remembered, the way he'd latched onto her, and how it had felt to run at that speed.
But Dad and Barnaby had moved in together, and she'd be moving in with them later this summer -- she was already spending weekends in the city, helping them shop for things for her new room, convincing Dad she didn't want the same kind of canopy bed she'd had when she was like three -- and so naturally when they threw a housewarming party they invited the family Dad had been friends with since before she was born. "Literally," Dad had said, and for once he wasn't misusing the word 'literally.' "Your mom was pregnant with you when she bumped into Elastigirl."
"Really?" she'd demanded, suddenly interested, so that was when he told her a lot more of the story. It was hard to get him to talk about her mom, sometimes, so this was doubly welcome.
It was still a little hard for her to get used to. The Stern Bild heroes were all familiar to her, but the Parrs weren't, so it was hard to get used to the idea that this normal-seeming lady, the big, slightly paunchy, balding man, the girl a few years younger than her, were heroes. The baby had powers, too, apparently. And there was Dash, the age she was when she met him.
"I remember you!" he said to her, hanging back as Barnaby began the tour. "Wanna race again?"
"Not in the house," Barnaby called over his shoulder.
"Of course not in the house," she said, rolling her eyes a little. Violet giggled; she'd hung back, too.
"You can copy powers, right?" Violet asked. "Any powers?"
"Yeah. Any powers so far, anyway. I've never found any I couldn't. Why?"
"I wanted to see what you can do with mine. I'm always looking for ideas."
"Sure, I can do that!" This was a perk she hadn't considered; a new batch of powers to copy. Maybe Mrs. Incredible would be willing to let her borrow hers, too. "Yours we can do here, probably. We'll have to find a place for a race later. There's a park not far from here. You need to be careful, though, don't run off any edges. There are safety rails, but I bet they'd stand up like tissue paper at high speeds." She wasn't at all used to the Gold Stage, and Dash had probably never been here before, even if they'd been to Stern Bild. It was mostly a fancy residential area, with some upscale shops -- not the kind of thing tourists brought hyperactive kids to see.
"We saw that when we were coming in," Dash said. "Why's it built like that? It's really cool, but why?"
"Some of it's because of space, I know. We learned about it in history class. They started building up the stages back around the turn of the century, and they finished the Gold Stage back in the forties or so... I may not have been paying too much attention." They were both watching her, listening to her explanation. She kind of felt like the cool older sister all of a sudden. That'd probably last until Dragon Kid and Blue Rose showed up, so she should make the most of it while she could. "I don't remember the exact date, but I remember there was a black and white picture of Mr. Legend cutting the ribbon for the first tram ride up to the Gold Stage. And because of my dad I know when Mr. Legend started."
"I wonder if that's why our dad picked his name," Violet said. "Mr. Legend, Mr. Incredible... I need a hero name. I don't like Shrinking Violet."
"It sounds a lot like Ms. Violet from the Second League," Kaede said. "But her powers are nothing like yours."
"And it makes it sound like your power is to get really tiny," Dash added, and Violet shot him a look.
"Maybe, like, See-Through?" Kaede suggested. "Transparency?"
"Hmmm..."
"Do mine next!" Dash demanded. "Or do mine first! Mine's easier."
"Prism?" Kaede suggested. "I don't see how yours is easier. Flash is already taken and Dash is your real name."
"I like Prism!"
Kotetsu and Bob were sitting by the grill, letting Antonio handle the actual grilling. Helen was over by the patio with Bunny, Sky High and Blue Rose; the baby was a big draw, it turned out. Bunny was supposedly just being a host, but when Blue Rose passed him the baby, he took him over tentatively; Kotetsu watched, only halfway listening to Bob, as his partner -- still the best word they had -- gradually relaxed, bouncing the kid slightly. Seeing a smile spread out over Bunny's face was one of his favorite sights in the world.
Yeah, they'd be reviving the adoption discussion tonight, he figured. Good time for it, with Kaede here. See how she felt about babies after this. She was inside with the older Parr kids, at the moment, or maybe giving someone else the tour of the house, since he'd heard the doorbell ring earlier; he wasn't sure whether or not she should try holding Jack-Jack, whose array of powers sounded pretty scary. She didn't usually have a lot of control when she first got her hands on an ability, though she and Barnaby both swore up and down she was getting better. And it might actually be good to have someone who was able to talk try out the baby's powers, so Bob and Helen weren't constantly getting surprised. Helen's bright "he keeps us on our toes!" had sounded kind of forced.
And Kaede did have better control of her base power, now. She didn't automatically copy everyone she touched anymore. Maybe she could just hold the baby without bursting into flames or flying or anything. That might be best.
"So maybe I should have thought it was too good to be true, but at a time like that, it looked more like too good to pass up."
"You didn't think to ask anybody about it? See if it checked out?"
"It was all hush-hush, top-secret stuff! I didn't tell Lucius, I didn't even tell Helen! Now I know why they set it up that way, but at the time I took them at their word."
"You know, this Syndrome guy," Antonio said. "You said he made that Omnidroid thing, he made weapons, set it up so he could fly?"
"Rockets, too. All kinds of gadgets."
"That sounds kinda... familiar. Don't you think, Kotetsu?"
"Wait. Like..." He looked around, but he probably couldn't lower his voice enough for Bunny not to hear the word. "Like Ouroboros?" he said, lowering his voice anyway. Sure enough, Bunny's smile faded almost instantly, and Jack-Jack started to fuss. Bunny's eyes met Kotetsu's, and Kotetsu tried to smile reassuringly. I swear I'll fill you in, he mouthed, which probably accomplished very little -- Bunny couldn't seem to read lips worth a damn, at least not his -- but seemed to do the trick anyway. He went back to bouncing Jack-Jack on his hip, and the baby calmed down quickly.
"Yeah. The robots, the powered suits, things like that? Not necessarily that he was working for them directly, but he might have sold them equipment."
"I couldn't tell you, but I might be able to help," Bob said. "His second-in-command, Mirage, helped us get back home at the end. I don't know if the contact number I had for her is any good now, but I'm pretty sure I know people who can get in touch with her. If anyone would have that kind of info she'd be the one."
"Thanks, Bob. It'd mean a lot to Bunny. Both of us," he amended. He couldn't remember exactly how much of the story he'd passed along, or how much the Parrs would have remembered, but "Ouroboros killed his parents" was pretty well-known. Kaede stepped out onto the porch, leading Dragon Kid and Origami outside; Dragon Kid made a beeline for the baby, and Kotetsu grinned.
"Happy to help," Bob said. "I can't even tell you how good it is to be back in action, and with my whole family -- I dunno, maybe it's irresponsible, but knowing we can all count on each other, it's like-- It feels great."
"No, I know exactly what you mean," Kotetsu said. The family he counted on was just a bit bigger.
Fandoms: Tiger & Bunny, The Incredibles
Characters: Most of the main cast of The Incredibles, Kotetsu, Tomoe, and Kaede Kaburagi, Barnaby Brooks Jr., Antonio Lopez
Pairings: Kotetsu/Tomoe, Bob/Helen, Kotetsu/Barnaby
Word count: 13k
Rating: PG
Warnings: The fic begins before Kaede is born, so Tomoe's death is part of the narrative.
Summary: Glimpses of a friendship between two superhero families that lasts through the better part of two decades and sees them all through more ups and downs than they ever expected.
Notes: I used the timeline from This is Sternbild: Kaede's birth is in 1968 (I gave her a fall birthdate,) Tomoe dies in 1972, Kotetsu and Barnaby team up in late NC 1977, defeat Jake around the end of NC 1977/beginning of 1978, and the final arc of the series takes place in December 1978. The final scenes of the series take place on Christmas Eve, 1979.
June, NC 1968, Municiberg
For about four more months, Tomoe Kaburagi would be able to say with total honesty that this was the hardest yet most awesome experience of her life: standing around in a room full of superheroes, trying not to completely geek out. She was almost completely sure childbirth would top it on both counts, but for now, this was the undisputed winner.
Every so often, she'd spot somebody who wasn't just a hero but a star, and she'd kind of squeak, and squeeze Kotetsu's arm. He liked to pretend he was above fanboying, now that he was a hero himself, but he'd kind of babbled when he bumped into Gazerbeam earlier, and he was refusing to just go up and say hello to Mr. Incredible no matter how many times she poked him in the ribs.
"Okay, fine, if you're going to be like that," she whispered, finally giving up.
"I just don't know what to say! Like, 'Hi, Mr. Incredible, your powers are kind of like mine except better, what's that like?'"
"His are not even better! His strength is only multiplied by twenty, not a hundred. And having it always on has to have its downsides."
"Yeah, it must suck to have no time limit."
"And... break things..." She had no idea whether that was a problem for him. "Oh my gosh that's Elastigirl!" Talking to Mr. Incredible, in fact. She was wearing the same red sparkly mask she wore in costume, and a red and white dress. No question that was her. She was a little taller than Tomoe had expected -- even wearing flats she didn't just look tiny next to Mr. Incredible. "And I think that's Blazestone?"
"Yeah, I think so."
"I wish Antonio was here. He'd make you go up and say hello." She stopped a waitress with a plate of little hors d'ourves that were probably too classy to actually be called pigs-in-a-blanket even if that's what they were, and put three on her little paper plate. "Kaede-or-maybe-Aoi wants to know why they haven't opened the buffet yet."
"I think the plane from LA got delayed," he said. She wasn't sure if that was supposed to answer the first or the second part of what she'd said. Mr. Incredible waved at someone, Blazestone made a face, leaned in to whisper something to Elastigirl, and moved away. Tomoe popped a sausage bite in her mouth and turned back to Kotetsu; he was making small talk with Thunderhead. More time to chew, then. Medusa, one of the Stern Bild heroes, was talking to Gazerbeam. About shooting things out of their eyes, probably. She couldn't think what else they'd have in common. There was Steel Scorpion, another LA hero, and Captain Hammer, so maybe Antonio was somewhere around here after all. And Winged Victory! She tried to elbow Kotetsu, but she hit someone's bare arm instead. She turned to apologize -- to Elastigirl.
"Oh my gosh, I am so, so sorry!" she babbled, horribly aware of all the crumbs she must have all over her front, her lack of a mask, the fact she couldn't place Kotetsu so she didn't have an obvious excuse to be here at all.
"Are you okay?" Elastigirl was asking at the same time. "I mean, I'm fine, I'm stretchy."
"I still didn't mean to bump into you," Tomoe said, trying to surreptitiously dust off her chest. "I have no idea where my husband wandered off to. I was trying to elbow him. He's the hero, Wild Tiger. I'm just a civilian."
"Wild Tiger? I know someone who's been wanting to talk to him. Hang on just a second." She turned away, and Tomoe took the opportunity to brush herself off thoroughly. Her new pregnant boob size made it that much harder to eat messy foods without showering herself, and the baby's voracious appetite didn't help either. She looked up just in time to see Elastigirl's neck shrink back down to its normal size, and then her arm stretch over the crowd to tap a massive blond man on the shoulder. Mr. Incredible, who was talking to Frozone.
"THAT IS SO COOL," Tomoe blurted before she could stop herself. She tried to take a moment to get herself under control. "Do you think you could get Tiger that way, too?" she asked, sounding significantly calmer. So cool, not to mention a lot more efficient than trying to catch his attention the non-stretchy way.
"You got it," Elastigirl said, grinning. "Where is he?"
"'Scuse me, coming through," Kotetsu mumbled, edging through the crowd. Elastigirl? Talking to Tomoe. Tomoe looked thrilled, and he grinned at the sight. It was nice to see Tomoe so happy, and not feeling awkward or out of place. There were a lot fewer civilians here than he'd kind of expected, maybe because of the secret-identity thing. There was a guy who'd come with Thunderhead, and a woman with Riddlemask.
"Wild Tiger?" she asked, and he nodded.
"Elastigirl," he replied. "It's great to meet you, and I see you've met my wife and daughter. Or son, but probably daughter."
"She's totally a daughter. And I actually didn't make the introductions there. Japanese names are a little hard to explain," she added, to Elastigirl.
"Really? I'm curious, but in a second, it looks like someone who's been taking his sweet time is on his way over."
"Sorry, sorry," Mr. Incredible said, as she stretched an arm around his shoulders and reeled him in. "We got caught up with Motormouth, and, well, you can tell just from the name-- Wild Tiger!"
"It's an honor to meet you, sir," Kotetsu blurted, sticking out his hand.
It took a few seconds of crushing handshake for the honorific to sink in. "What? No, no, you're my age!"
"You've been at it longer, though."
"Just by a few years! And with the Stern Bild system, that's not surprising. We've got a lot fewer hoops to jump through out here."
"Thanks for leaving me back there," Frozone grumbled, joining them. "Ahh, you found Tiger."
"H-- Elastigirl did."
"So we've been wanting to ask you," Frozone turned to Kotetsu, "do you break things as often as he does?"
"I wasn't gonna put it like that! And I wanted to ask about the points system, too, scoring and everything."
"I don't know how often you break things," Kotetsu began.
"Constantly," Frozone supplied, and Mr. Incredible protested. Tomoe was snickering and trying, not very hard, to hide it.
"Are you asking about accidents, or on purpose?" he asked.
"If it's on purpose, it's not breaking things, it's collateral damage," Mr. Incredible said. "Like knocking down a wall to get someone out of a building? Collateral damage."
"That's good!" Kotetsu said. "I like that! Help me remember that one, honey."
"I think Tsubasa and Elastigirl and I need to go lie in wait by the buffet," she said, on the verge of giggling again.
"Wait, Tsubasa? That one's new," he said, but she kissed him on the cheek and left. "Don't know if I like that one. Anyway, about breaking things and collateral damage. It's funny you should ask..."
"So four years in Stern Bild before I'm ever in any kind of danger, my husband's a top-ranking hero, and who comes to my rescue? The Purple Panther!"
"You know, I can't blame her, though," Elastigirl -- Helen -- replied. "I always try to rescue women if I have a choice too. You save a guy, and he either starts up with 'hey can I have your number, you need a sidekick?' or he gets all macho about it, 'I woulda been fine, I could handle a broken bone,' like, yeah, you would've just hit your skull, pretty sure it wouldn't have damaged anything important!"
Tomoe laughed. "Do you think you'd ever date a civilian?"
"I dunno." Helen swirled her drink in her glass. "It's complicated no matter how you look at it. I know some women who date other supers and it's just constant drama, like Blazestone and Frozone--"
"Oh my God that was true?!"
"Shh! Yeah, it was. They broke up, though, probably for good, when she went to prison. He's seeing someone else now."
"Honey Hammond? The news anchor? He keeps rescuing her."
"You're like an encyclopedia! It's kind of scary."
"Sorry. I -- don't judge me for this, okay? -- I quit my job a couple weeks ago and so I've just been eating up hero news pretty much every waking moment. It's just that with Tiger working as a hero, we can't coordinate schedules too well, and we'd been thinking it'd work out best to have me stay home with our kids anyway, and then commuting in Stern Bild can be just a nightmare, partly because of Tiger, and after the car blew up..."
"Don't worry about it. You don't need to defend any of your choices to me. I'm a superhero and I figure being a mom's a lot harder than that."
"This part of it's pretty easy, but calm before the storm, right?"
"That's what I'm told... but yeah, Frozone and Honey are an item now. I like her, but don't tell Blazestone."
"So you and Mr. Incredible..." Tomoe grinned, leaning her chin on her hand, as Helen looked around furtively.
"I really don't want that getting around, okay? Not yet, anyway. It's still pretty new, and you know, I like him a lot, so I don't want to jinx it? And I mean, all this time I've been telling everybody, no, I don't need a partner, I don't need a sidekick, I like my independence, and no, I don't want to breed a race of superbabies or anything--"
"Who was that?"
"Gamma Jack."
"Really?"
Helen nodded. "Thinks we're superior. Supers, I mean, NEXTs. Anyway, Bob's different. He doesn't expect me to take second billing to him or anything, he's not trying to 'help me out' or steal my targets, he hasn't been chasing me like a creep for months like some supers, we just... started talking. And it was nice. And after a we'd had a couple of conversations he asked me to dinner, you know?"
"Amazing. Like a normal person."
"Seriously."
"Not like I'm one to talk, though. I mean, a rescue was how we... okay, not how we met, we met at school, but things kinda... changed after that, you know?"
"I don't think there's anything wrong with that either, it's just the ones who are all 'I've only seen you on TV but you saved me so now I love you'... mostly guys. I've gotten a couple of women who did that too, but with guys it's almost like they need to come up with some kind of way to not feel threatened that they got saved by a girl, and that's just..."
"Insulting. It's not even about you."
"Exactly! Hey, who's the guy in the weird helmet over there with our guys?"
"Oh, that's Ant-- Bison. Rock Bison. I was wondering where he was!"
"Ah, so you know him out of costume."
"Yeah, we go back to high school, believe it or not."
"Must've been something in the water where you lived."
"I wonder... Maybe I should waddle over there and say hello. Once you get him into a conversation about weight training it pretty much takes a nuclear blast to get him out again."
"There is another option," Helen said, with a sly grin and a stretch of her wrist, and Tomoe's eyes lit up.
August, NC 1969, Stern Bild
"Four unknown heroes have suddenly appeared! They appear to be in the middle of combat-- they appear to be fighting each other! We can identify Frozone, and that seems to be Mr. Incredible with him. It appears that one of these individuals is not actually a hero, but a criminal these heroes are trying to apprehend-- and meanwhile Wild Tiger has just broken through a brick wall with the last civilians from the building damaged in the blast! The third hero from the group that mysteriously appeared has now been identified as Apogee! Apogee is a former member of the recently disbanded-- we've just been informed that the criminal in question is an individual using the alias Negatide. We don't know who that is! The building has now collapsed thanks to Negatide being punched into it! It's a good thing all the civilians have been cleared out of the area! And now the Purple Panther and Wild Tiger are attempting to help apprehend this Negatide! Wild Tiger has forty seconds left of his power!"
Kotetsu could really do without the loud, extremely enthusiastic commentary right in his ear -- the headset was a new and unwelcome development, and the announcer kind of sounded like he was going to have a stroke from all the excitement -- but the countdown part was helpful. Negatide, huh? Like the guy was trying to mimic heroes or something.
"Where'd you find this guy?" he shouted to Frozone, swinging from the ice bridge to a girder.
"Municiberg! Don't ask me how we got here. You got much time left?"
"Not much, so I need to make this count."
"Get over here, I'll get you closer."
This ice-surfing thing was pretty cool, really, but there wasn't much time to enjoy it -- they were closing in on Negatide, who was wearing a black-and-white suit with some kind of fin on the back like he thought he was a penguin-shark or a weird-looking orca, and seemed to be grappling with Mr. Incredible -- and Kotetsu fired right past him, zipped into easy range of him, and got a forearm around his throat. And then he yelped as something really, really hot seemed to explode in his vicinity, and then the Panther landed on the front of Negatide as well.
"See, I didn't even know he teleported," Lucius was explaining, in the locker room of the Apollon training center. They'd dressed the visiting heroes in whatever promotional tee-shirts and track suits would fit them; Bob was dressed head-to-toe in Odysseus apparel because they went up to XXXL, since their current hero, the Cobalt Commando, was another massive man. Apogee (someone had called her Carol, Kotetsu thought) had selected Apollon and Helios because of the sun links, and Lucius had blue Top Mag gear, to Kotetsu's secret delight.
"I knew he teleported, but I didn't know he had this kind of range," Mr. Incredible said. "No wonder he's been so hard to track down."
"You get a lot of these crooks with fancy names and costumes?" Kotetsu asked. "I can kind of see why they'd do it, but you'd think they'd want to be totally anonymous, not just keep their real names secret."
"We're getting more and more," Mr. Incredible said. "It is pretty weird, when you think about it. Bomb Voyage, Baron von Ruthless, Sister Euthanasia, Dr. Chemoblood..."
"Looks kind of like you have a sunburn," Frozone said to Kotetsu. "Should've warned you about Apogee."
"Nah, there wasn't much time. I'll live, and my hat'll cover it up some." He hoped it'd fade soon; he had an unburned area exactly the shape of his cowl. He settled the hat on his head, pulling it down over his forehead, and wandered over to a mirror to check the effect. "Dr. Chemoblood sounds creepy. Does he bleed on people?"
"You'd think," Frozone said. "He's actually kind of like a werewolf, he gets all hairy and his strength increases."
"Like a hairy verison of me!"
"Yeah, but I wasn't gonna say it. He does glow in the dark. I guess that's why he picked the name."
"Doesn't seem like a very good idea to become a crook, though. 'Hey, here I am!'"
"Oh boys..." a feminine voice trilled through the locker room. "Is everyone decent in here?"
"Come on in, Fire Emblem," Kotetsu called out.
"That wasn't really an answer," Fire Emblem said, but that didn't stop him from strolling into the middle of the room. "Oh. I see it would have been a yes."
"Sorry," Kotetsu said cheerfully.
"The car's here to take our guests to the airport, unless we can persuade them to stay..."
"Nah, I'm ready to go," Lucius said. "Bob?"
"You go on ahead. I'll be right out."
"Make sure Fire Emblem keeps his hands where you can see 'em," Kotetsu suggested.
"Do I want to know why?"
"You're going to give me a bad reputation, Tiger," Fire Emblem pouted, before he followed Frozone out. Kotetsu listened for any yelling, but if Fire Emblem got all gropey, it was after the door closed.
"What's he do, exactly?"
"He has fire powers. Oh, you meant -- he's kinda handsy," Kotetsu said, settling back down on a bench and stretching his legs out in front of him. "So what's up? Did you need something to take with you for the trip?"
"No, not that, um... how'd you propose to Tomoe?"
"Oh man, you're going for it? Congratulations!"
"She hasn't said yes yet! I haven't even asked yet!"
"Well, you guys have been dating for like a year, right? And working together before that. You should know pretty well how it's gonna go."
"I guess so, but I still want to do this right. And she could always just say no. She's always talking about how much she likes her independence, she wasn't dating anybody at all for quite a while... I mean, she might want to stay together without getting married."
"Has she said that? Have you dropped any hints? You know, 'if we get married,' that kind of thing?"
"Sometimes, yeah. She's been okay with it. Really okay with it, actually." He got kind of a silly grin on his face, then he snapped back to reality. "No, I want to propose, I just get stuck on the details. If you're supposed to surprise her with a ring, how do you make sure it fits? Or that she likes it? And if you get her ring size and take her shopping for one she likes, it's not exactly a surprise, right?"
"She is Elastigirl. Her ring size could change, right?"
"She's Elastigirl, not Play-doh Girl. It'd just be like squeezing a tight ring onto anybody else, it's just you can squeeze a smaller one onto her."
"Okay, so much for that. I dunno what to tell you. I proposed to Tomoe by asking 'so when do you want to get married?'"
"....huh," Bob said.
"It worked?" Kotetsu said. "Not much help with the way you want to do it, though."
May, NC 1970, Stern Bild
"Welcome back, princess!" Kotetsu cooed, accepting his squealing daughter from Tomoe. "And queen," he added, kissing his wife.
"The princess was a champ on the plane," Tomoe said, shifting her carryon to her other shoulder. "Totally made up for the flight out, if you ask me. Maybe not if you ask the other people who were on the flight out. I hope you parked close, because I cannot wait to tell you all about the wedding."
"Wow. That good, or that bad?"
"That... incredible?" She snickered as he groaned at the pun. "Let's go. I'll tell you all about it in the car."
"So Bob was late," she said, twisting around in her seat to reunite Kaede with a thrown toy, as Kotetsu maneuvered through the parking garage. "Not ceremony-cancelingly late, but noticeably late. Helen told me at the reception they'd both been out hero-ing most of the evening, and it turns out Bob totally lost track of time, or maybe forgot what day it was. Did you hear on the news about him destroying some train tracks, wrecking the train to stop it...?"
"Oh yeah. I was so proud."
"I told him you would be! That was the night of the wedding."
Kotetsu whistled. "That's my idea of a bachelor party."
"The day of? Shouldn't it be the night before?"
"Close enough. But look at all the lives he saved! Can you think of a better way to get ready for getting married?"
Tomoe just smiled fondly. "I think you're an influence on him."
"A bad influence? I'm not so sure. I mean, he got started three years before I did."
"I'm not sure. Just an influence."
September, NC 1970, Stern Bild
"You are a terrible influence on him," Helen said, laughing.
"I didn't blow up the train tracks!" Bob protested.
"No, of course not, you just threw the bomb."
"I didn't throw it, I landed with it. It had to go somewhere! Better with me than blowing up that annoying kid. If I'd had time I would have taken it somewhere else."
"I would have done the same," Kotetsu said mildly, coaxing a hamburger's edge up to check on it.
"Exactly!" Bob and Helen said, practically in unison.
"Injuries are no fun, definitely, but compared to the alternatives..." Tomoe said. "Nobody died, right? And it wasn't like you screwed up the train lines at rush hour, unlike some people who shall remain my husband. So why all the complaints?"
"I just wish I knew," Bob groaned.
"Would you believe a guy he saved from committing suicide is suing him, now?" Helen added.
"Why, so he can pay for therapy?" Kotetsu flipped a hamburger on the grill. It was a beautiful evening, warm and summery, mellowed now that the sun was setting; you could hear kids playing somewhere else in the neighborhood. The Parrs (okay, mostly Helen) had been impressed with all the work Tomoe had done on the yard, so Tomoe was all proud and happy. They were actually using their backyard for something, for once. Kaede was toddling from adult to adult, and everyone was in full agreement that she was the most adorable kid in the world. He was ranked second for the season so far, neck and neck with the Panther, who was in first, and Antonio was a close third in his first Stern Bild season. Life was pretty great.
"That's the upside to the Stern Bild arrangement," Antonio said. "Your company covers the liability."
"We do have the NSA," Bob said. "It's not like we're going to go bankrupt personally."
"Which is good, since we still can't get used to a joint checking account," Helen added. "How did you guys do it?"
"We got married when we were twenty," Tomoe said. "We were barely used to having separate-- Kaede honey no!" Helen shot a hand out to grab the little girl, and Tomoe pounced, extracting something from her daughter's mouth.
"What was it?" Antonio asked, sounding genuinely curious. "Kotetsu, I want mine medium rare, remember?"
"I know, I know."
"Just a rock. I was afraid it was a bug." Tomoe bounced Kaede on her hip. "Are you two thinking of having kids?"
"That's a very good question," Helen said.
"Maybe someday," Bob said. "It'd be nice. But not yet, that's for sure."
"I'm not ready to step back just yet," Helen said. "I sort of feel like I need to prove I'm not retiring just because I got married."
"Who'd expect that?" Antonio asked. "Most people don't even know you're married, right?"
"Oh, other supers..." Helen sighed.
"It's that whole independence thing," Bob said. "The other supers and NSA agents all sort of got it in their heads that her being single and her being a hero were connected. Like getting married has slowed her down any!"
"Well, yeah! Now I got something to prove!"
"I swear, she's sniping my arrests now. Though she started before the wedding."
"Think how much worse it'd be if you actually got points for it," Kotetsu said. "I got a couple of well-done burgers here and YES, Antonio, the first medium rare is coming right up."
"'Bout time."
"Cannibal cow."
July, NC 1971, Municiberg and Stern Bild
"It's really not looking so good out here," Helen said. "Even if superheroics aren't outlawed, the NSA is planning to shut down all licensed super operations... we'll be back to where we were in the Forties, only now people are a lot more lawsuit-happy."
"And it's worse than that, because there's precedent for holding heroes responsible for any damage..." Tomoe couldn't help looking at the static image, even though she knew perfectly well the expression wasn't going to change.
"Good thing for you Stern Bild doesn't really care about international hero arrangements."
"Considering Kotetsu's record, yeah." Tomoe sighed. "That's such a shame. I'm so sorry, Helen. I know you were wanting to go back to work after the baby was born."
"I didn't intend to right away, but... yeah. It's disappointing. Maybe less for me, since we'd decided to have kids sooner rather than later -- I knew I'd be taking an extended break at some point. It's just... really extended, now. But Bob's really taking it hard."
"It's probably kind of... Kotetsu sees his job as making the world safer, protecting people... and here Bob's looking at being told he can't do that, right when he's going to have a family to protect. I mean, he has you, but he knows you can defend yourself."
"That's true. I hadn't really looked at it like that, but you're right. And there's nothing I can really do about it. I wish there was, but the pregnancy hormones, all of that -- I've been pretty impatient with him, because I want him to be focused on our family, and all he can think about is the lawsuits."
"I can't read his mind, but maybe that's how he's doing it, you know?"
May, NC 1972, Stern Bild
Helen was trying, very hard, to keep Tomoe's advice in mind whenever Bob got a little too obsessive about the anti-supers bill, about the moratorium on heroics, about the news out of Stern Bild. She kept it in mind when he said he wanted satellite TV so they could get Hero TV directly and not have to settle for just the highlights the local news channels ran. She kept it in mind when the law passed. She kept it in mind when he suggested a trip to Stern Bild for their wedding anniversary. She couldn't blame him for being a little stir-crazy, after all. She was occupied with Violet; he had the data-entry job the NSA had found him. She could take occasional diapers over constant boredom any day. Bob was nuts about Violet too, when he was home, but when he was at work? Of course he listened to the news on the radio, read it on his breaks, and of course he couldn't help comparing his old job to his new one.
So even if the trip to Stern Bild was a completely transparent ploy to get her interested in moving there, she'd play along. She looked up museums and parks, she packed five times as much of everything as Vi would probably need, and she even looked into Stern Bild immigration, secretly, if only to see if her vague idea that it'd be more complicated than just moving there was accurate. It was, but the hero card was pretty powerful. That was something to worry about later, though. For now, she was looking forward to seeing Tomoe and Kotetsu again.
She was a little worried about them. When she called their house, often as not Tomoe was sleeping, or just "unavailable," and Kotetsu sounded distant and distracted, especially when Tomoe was napping. Or unavailable. A couple of times when she did talk to Tomoe directly, she asked, tentatively, if anything was wrong. "I'm just a little under the weather," Tomoe would say, but she'd been saying that consistently since just around the beginning of the year, maybe during the holidays; it was a little hard to be sure when it had started.
So a visit to the Kaburagis was definitely on the agenda. Helen didn't know what she thought was wrong, and maybe it was nothing, but she was going to see for herself.
"Come on in," Tomoe said, smiling, and Helen was grateful for her superhero training; she was good at smiling on command. Tomoe was not well; gaunt might be pushing it a little, but frail wasn't. Sick? Eating disorder? Bruising on her inner arm, before her sleeve fell over the mark, but an IV didn't really narrow it down.
Bob hadn't had the time she had to develop suspicions and figure out it was something their friends weren't discussing readily. "Tomoe, you okay?" he asked, as he set Vi's carrier down on the coffee table. "You're looking kinda... peaked."
Her laugh sounded a little weary. "I've been better," she admitted. "Have a seat, though. Can I get you anything?"
"Tomoe, really, let me," Helen said. "I can reach everything in a kitchen, remember?"
"Really, it's all right," Tomoe said, but then she seemed to consider. "The glasses are all in the pantry closest to the fridge."
"Do you want anything?"
"Just some water."
Water for Tomoe, a soda for Bob -- he liked Legend cola, which they couldn't get back home -- and, after some consideration, iced tea from the pitcher in the refrigerator for herself, although a beer was kind of tempting. She could hear Bob proudly describing Vi's powers, and then going into the story about how they found out, which always came out funnier when he told it. She smiled as she wrapped her forearm around one of the glasses, carrying each of the others in one hand. Tomoe was laughing. Good.
"I'm sorry dinner may be a little late," Tomoe said. "Kaede's down for a nap right now, and Kotetsu got a call just a few minutes before you got here. He didn't want to miss seeing you guys, but I don't want to make you wait for hours, either."
Bob's face had lit up, and Helen sighed. "A call?" he asked hopefully.
"Let me guess," Helen said. "You brought your suit, didn't you?"
He nodded, a little shamefacedly.
"Where is it? In the diaper bag?"
"Kinda?"
"Is it illegal, or anything?" Helen asked. "Unlicensed heroics?"
"Not illegal, but pretty risky. If you don't do anything wrong they don't do much, but if you screw up the penalties are really severe. It's mostly for bad reasons, if you ask me. The companies don't want a bunch of untrained freelancers getting in the way while the sponsored heroes are working. Or stealing the spotlight. I guess it helps keep things from getting chaotic, but it's also about protecting their investment. They wouldn't be nearly as likely to lower the hammer on someone like you."
"Okay," Helen said wearily, "Go ahead." Bob rummaged through one of the side compartments on the diaper bag. Tomoe pointed wordlessly to the bathroom door, and he vanished inside.
"Sorry," Tomoe said. "Did I say anything I shouldn't?"
"No, no, this was bound to happen. Maybe it'll get it out of his system." But she couldn't help feeling wistful when he emerged in his suit and mask, got the location and Kotetsu's number from Tomoe, and ducked out the door. Getting out there and righting some wrongs, punching some bad guys, sounded really appealing right now. Whatever she was about to find out from Tomoe, or maybe not find out, wouldn't be fixed nearly that easily.
The ice clinked in the water glass as Tomoe set it down on the table. Violet stirred, yawned, vanished for a second at the height of the yawn, and then reappeared. "That's just amazing," Tomoe said appreciatively.
"Isn't it?" Helen took a deep breath. "Tomoe, can you tell me what's going on?"
Tomoe turned to look at her, and Helen could see she was crying.
November, NC 1972, Hamletville
Helen had broken down crying in the Hallmark store, trying to pick out a condolence card. The sight of Mommy crying set Violet off, and she simultaneously burst into wails and went invisible. At least cold weather made it easier to mask; cover her up with a blanket and no one could really tell. No matter what Bob said they were never moving to Florida.
She'd eventually gone out on a weekend afternoon, leaving Violet with Bob, to buy the card, even though she knew perfectly well that Kotetsu wouldn't care what it looked like and that she was going to write her own message in it anyway.
Kotetsu,
We're so sorry for your loss. I know nothing we can say can possibly help, but we just want you to know you and Kaede are always in our thoughts.
The first time I met Tomoe, at that reception in Municiberg, she mentioned to me that being married to you was a dream come true. Not just because you were a good husband, but because you were a good hero, too. She could be a fan of you and never be let down or disappointed. She'd never find out that her favorite hero was really a jerk, or had no sense of humor, or was just in it for the money.
I know we can't miss her as much as you and Kaede do, but we miss her a lot. We never got to see you guys as much as we wanted. Please let us know if there's anything we can do to help.
We're so sorry for your loss. I know nothing we can say can possibly help, but we just want you to know you and Kaede are always in our thoughts.
The first time I met Tomoe, at that reception in Municiberg, she mentioned to me that being married to you was a dream come true. Not just because you were a good husband, but because you were a good hero, too. She could be a fan of you and never be let down or disappointed. She'd never find out that her favorite hero was really a jerk, or had no sense of humor, or was just in it for the money.
I know we can't miss her as much as you and Kaede do, but we miss her a lot. We never got to see you guys as much as we wanted. Please let us know if there's anything we can do to help.
NC 1973, Hamletville
Helen bought a lot of cards to send to Kotetsu at intervals throughout the year. "Thinking of you" cards and birthday cards and random blank cards; it felt somehow less formal than writing a letter, less demanding than making a phone call, and didn't everybody like getting mail? She emailed him, too, but sometimes it took him a long time to respond, and sometimes she got the impression he didn't really want to respond.
It was the fact he'd mentioned, in a note he sent thanking her for the condolence card, that Kaede had gone back to his hometown to live with his mother and brother. Her heart went out to a little girl who lost her mother and her father both at once, but Kotetsu lost his wife and his daughter both at once, too, and that meant he was alone, while Kaede wasn't. Maybe it'd help a little to know somebody was thinking about him. Maybe.
April, NC 1975, Stern Bild
"The good part about the NSA program is that when I say I'm between jobs, I know it's true," Bob said, and took another drink of his beer. "It's just embarrassing, and Helen's not happy, having to deal with moving now when she's pregnant, getting started all over again -- we had some neighbors she was friendly with, we were in a neighborhood with good schools..."
"Are you moving out here?" Antonio asked.
"Nah. I wish we were, but no. I just needed to get away for a while, Helen wanted me out from underfoot, and I figured maybe you guys could use some help. But I don't even fit into my old hero suit anymore."
"There's plenty of places here to get a new one made," Kotetsu said. "Or Antonio could help you out there. He sews."
"Yes I do," Antonio said proudly. Kotetsu downed the last of his beer, smiling. Antonio was impossible to tease. "Making a whole suit's a bit much for one weekend, though," he added.
"If I wore something anyone else made, I think E would sense it and destroy me somehow," Bob said. "I'll just stay in street clothes if I stumble on any trouble. My mask still fits."
"So what happened?" Kotetsu asked. "There was that time Violet was a baby, too." The bartender dropped by, and Kotetsu motioned for a refill.
"That time, I got hit by a car. Not really my fault, you know? This last time, I had a couple of slip-ups, breaking things and bending doorknobs, stuff that people were noticing, but the big one was punching through a wall -- there was an armed robbery going on, I could feel one of the gunmen getting antsy and getting ready to shoot, and I couldn't just let it happen."
"Helen has to get that, right?" Kotetsu said. "She was in the same line of work."
"She does, but she didn't have the danger-sense, you know? It's not quite the same. She always had to be on the lookout for trouble, and even though she knows that's not how it worked for me, she doesn't get it. She wants me to just stop looking for it, and I tell her, I don't, it finds me, and she thinks I'm just making excuses. And this time, I dunno. Maybe I could have been more subtle about it. This was pretty bad. I was even on surveillance tapes. So we have to move to a new place where we won't compromise any wiped memories, they pull some strings to get me a new job, and I have to go back to keeping my head down. I tell ya, sometimes I wish I had a time limit like you do."
"Wanna trade?" Trade powers, trade places... that was not a good rabbit-hole to consider. No chance to be a hero, just a living wife, an ordinary family. Or heroics, and being completely alone. And his promise to Tomoe... Kotetsu took a long swig of his beer.
"You ever think of moving out here?" Antonio asked. Bless him.
"Constantly. Helen was willing to consider it for a while, but now with our second on the way she's not so sure. Thinks it'll be good for the kids to have open spaces to run around, a big backyard, that kind of thing. Stern Bild suburbs are way out of our price range, especially since we wouldn't have NSA support to move here."
"You've got the wrong guys to argue with you on that," Antonio said. "We both grew up in the country."
"Yeah," Kotetsu agreed. "I mean, we were going to raise Kaede here, but... I dunno. I guess you use parks a lot more, if you live in the city. Play sports instead of just running all over the place. That kind of thing."
"Mm," Bob agreed, but he didn't seem to be paying attention. Kotetsu took a long drink of his beer. It hurt less than it used to, but that didn't mean it stopped hurting. They'd been building a life around themselves, a life where Kaede could figure-skate and he could drop in on her practices, where she'd have her mother's help with her homework, all the opportunities a giant city had to offer -- the opportunities he'd thought he could reach when he ran away at ten, that they actually had found when they moved here after high school -- and now Tomoe was gone and Kaede was growing up exactly where he did, sleeping in the same bedroom, going to the same school, in an enclave of people who thought they were all pretty much alike, more alike than they were different. That was great until you turned out to be different, and then you didn't belong anymore. Would she have been better off here, going to a school where no one knew how to pronounce her name, learning that there were all kinds of people in the world, all kinds of everything, going to world-class museums on her field trips, learning how to take cover when the hijackers fired into the air?
"Why do you guys do this?" Bob finally asked. "Helen's all, it's not about helping people anymore, you're just an adrenaline junkie. I'm not saying that's not part of it, but that's not the only reason. I like helping people! It's not like I ever get to in the kind of civilian work I'm doing."
"Exactly!" Kotetsu said, roused out of his thoughts. "It's about protecting people. If I just wanted an adrenaline rush I'd go skydiving."
"I wouldn't," Antonio said, and Kotetsu elbowed him. "But it's like being a cop or a fireman -- it's all part of the package. Helping people and going into danger kinda go hand in hand."
"Respect, too," Kotetsu said. "All of it. Sure, you miss the rush, and the fame, but that doesn't mean you don't miss the, uh, the helping-people part of it too."
"Yeah, exactly. Hey, can you tell Helen that?" He pulled out his cell phone and Kotetsu snatched it out of his hand.
"You nuts? It's after midnight. You don't drunk-dial your own wife!"
"I'm not drunk! And why would I call anybody else's wife?"
"You still don't call your wife drunk after midnight."
"Yeah, even the single guy can tell you she's not going to want to listen if you do that."
"Okay, you're right, but I'm not drunk."
"Okay," Antonio agreed, cheerfully. Kotetsu had his doubts -- Bob had been putting them away pretty quickly, but he was a big guy, Antonio-sized, so Antonio would probably know. Kotetsu passed him back his phone, and Bob pocketed it.
"So if I can't move out here, at least I can bask in somebody else's glory. Tell me what you've been up to."
"Arrests and stuff? Kotetsu had a good one last week. The carjacking?"
First good one all season, but yeah, it had been pretty good. "Okay, so it was this gang of bank robbers all wearing animal masks, and the guy in a gorilla mask breaks away from the others and cuts across the freeway while Fire Emblem's rounding up his buddies. He just runs into traffic, finds one car that braked to avoid hitting him, and threatens the driver to get her to drive him, I dunno where. I swing over to their side and jump onto the car--"
April, NC 1978, Burbsville and Oriental Town
"Hey, Bob, what's up?"
"About what you'd expect... we're getting settled into Burbsville, getting to know everybody."
"I don't think I ever heard why you had to move this time."
"Got mad at my boss and accidentally snapped my desk in two. I might have been able to cover for that if I'd had a second to think, but in a cubicle... there were a dozen people there before I knew it. And finger-shaped dents in the the edge."
"Ouch."
"Could've been worse. It happened in the summer, so we didn't have to pull Vi out of school, and it was just between kindergarten and first grade -- she didn't have a whole bunch of friends she couldn't bear to leave."
"Yeah, it's easier to make friends at that age, I think. Maybe it just seemed that way to me because it was before I got my powers."
"This'd normally be my 'bowling night' with Lucius, but he and Honey are out of town. So I figured I'd call somebody who's still in the business."
"Oh, right, bowling night's a cover story." Kotetsu scritched at his beard. "And you don't have an excuse to leave without him. So it's not just that you're used to working with a partner now."
"Y'know, I never looked at it that way, and we've been doing this off and on since before Dash was born. Guess it makes sense you'd see it like that, though."
"Heh, yeah. Can't deny it."
"How's all that going now?"
"Pretty good," Kotetsu said, glad for once the Parrs didn't have video phones. His mother had accused him of having a silly grin on his face the last time he talked to her about Barnaby. He was just happy. It felt so good to work so well with someone, especially after you'd felt like you'd never be able to work with him at all. It felt good to see Bunny smiling when there wasn't even a camera anywhere near him, to see him so calm and relieved; he hadn't even realized how tightly wound his partner had been before until he saw the contrast after they'd defeated Jake. "Amazingly good, if you're looking at my points. I mean, that's not the part I've ever cared about, but it's making my bosses happy."
"Wasn't this Bunny guy kind of a point-hound? Is that part of it?"
"Nah, it's not that. I mean, he was, but he's stopped harping on all that, and things got better with him well before things got better with my standing." He sat up, feeling like he needed to explain this more. "It's like that whole... he was focused on winning no matter what, and now he's focused on playing the game. But because he's so focused on playing well, we win anyway. But it'd be okay even if we didn't, because we're playing the best we can."
"Well, good. Good to hear it."
"And what's up with you and the family?"
"Oh, you know, the usual. Vi's in school now, we managed to teach her how to control her powers enough that she doesn't vanish involuntarily anymore. She's shy enough she still abuses it a little, but hopefully with time..."
"That's gotta be rough," Kotetsu said. "When you have a power that you really want to use? I mean, you and me, any power accidents just get us in trouble."
"Hers are only going to keep her out of trouble until someone notices the floating clothes," Bob said. "After that, it's bigger trouble than ever. Convincing a little kid, though... And Dash is getting into everything. We don't know how he does it."
"He's, what, two, two and a half? That's just how it is at that age."
"I don't remember Vi being that bad, but she was such a quiet baby. Dash is kind of a hell-raiser." Bob just sounded proud, though, and Kotetsu smiled, a bit sadly. He never had as many stories to tell about Kaede, even talking to her nearly every night; too many of his stories were arguments, times he'd let her down, times she was mad at him, or mad about something else and taking it out on him. Violet had grown out of the 'oh yeah, when Kaede was that age' stories two years ago; pretty soon Dash would, too.
January, NC 1979, Burbsville
Bob had rehearsed this. Helen had made sure of that. "Don't go calling him just because you're disappointed you're losing a link to the hero business," she'd said. Several times. "He's still our friend, and you should call him if you're legitimately concerned, not just because you want to trade war stories, okay? He's bound to have mixed feelings about all this, so don't step on his toes."
"Maybe I should leave it to you," he'd finally said.
"Maybe you should!"
"I just want to see how he's doing, okay?"
"That's okay. That's great! That's the right reason to call him. That's what I've been saying all along."
"Okay. I'm going to go call him, then."
"Okay! Go call him!"
So he was half-laughing at how ridiculous marriage could be as he dialed. Helen popped her head into the room to pass him a note -- Get his new address! -- and he nodded, gave her a thumbs-up. She returned it and slipped back out.
"Hello?"
"Hey, Kotetsu. It's Bob. Retiring, huh?"
"Yep. You get the whole story? The power loss and everything?"
"Yeah. News here made hay with it -- see, supers could just start losing their powers at any minute--" which was exactly the kind of thing Helen didn't want him bringing up, so he faltered to a stop.
Kotetsu sighed. "I would have thought it'd bother me more than it does, you know?"
"What, losing your powers, or the part where I just put my foot in my mouth?"
"The second one," Kotetsu said, laughing a little to take the sting out of it.
"It could've been anybody. Other supers have lost their powers. You were just the first to make a public announcement about it. I'm almost surprised you're not sticking with it, you know? With those armor suits, you've got durability covered without any powers involved. I don't remember how much you could lift unpowered, but there are plenty of supers without super-strength, right?"
"Huh. I didn't know that. Me being the first, I mean. I'd heard about.... one other. Didn't know there were that many more not talking about it."
"It was the whole NSA thing -- a lot of open secrets there. I guess you get that a bit less with Hero TV, since you're all rivals. All but you and your partner. People play it closer to the vest?"
"It's weird, though. Officially we're rivals, but we work together a lot, especially when it comes to things like this. Or-- did you hear the part about me being framed for murder?"
"What?! No! What?"
"It's a really long story--"
"Those are the best kind!"
July, NC 1979, Burbsville
A woman with a bobbed flip of auburn hair lifted her arm to wave, and Kotetsu waved back. Barnaby glanced around the park. There were other people around, but none close at hand; a clutch of young people tossing a frisbee, some children on the playground equipment some distance away, but no other families amongst the picnic tables yet. It'd be safe to talk about hero business and powers for a bit longer. Wonderful, he thought. But that was selfish. He wanted to forget all about it, sometimes, because everything associated with Hero TV made him think of Maverick, but Kotetsu felt very differently, and this was one of his only outlets, really. This couple were retired heroes, just like he and Kotetsu were, and from what Kotetsu had said, the husband -- Bob -- was just as reluctantly retired as Kotetsu, though for a different reason. So they'd understand like few others.
Bob Parr was a huge man, powerfully built under the weight he'd clearly put on in retirement, and his handshake ground bones together; Barnaby powered up reflexively in self-defense, and that broke the ice nicely, sending Kotetsu and Helen off into gales of laughter and leaving both Barnaby and Bob laughing sheepishly as well. Helen hugged Kotetsu, Bob shook his hand carefully, and when Barnaby reached out to shake hands with Helen she grinned. "I think I'll wait till you're done glowing," she said. "Even if I could take it better than most."
"Practice?" he asked.
"Kotetsu didn't tell you? I used to be Elasti-girl."
He cast his mind back; he'd only really paid attention to heroes insofar as they were involved with investigating and combating crime syndicates, but he'd tried to stay aware of the international headliners in case of any developments on that front. He placed her around Kotetsu's age, so the time frame was right, as was her appearance. "I wouldn't so much crunch bones as squish them, then."
"I'd still rather pass if that's okay," she said. "Let me introduce you to our kids!" Violet, a dark-haired girl of maybe seven with her finger holding a place in a surprisingly thick book for her age, and Dash, a boy of four or five with a shock of blond hair. Violet didn't stir from the picnic bench where she'd been parked when they approached and barely glanced up at them, while Dash appeared to be sizing all of them up even as he fidgeted. His attention seemed fixed most on Kaede.
"Wanna race?" the boy asked her. "Winner gets the loser's dessert?"
"Seriously?" Kaede said, skeptically. The boy came up to about her waist.
"I'm really fast," he said, with obvious pride.
"Dash..." Helen began, in warning tones.
Kaede eyed him for a moment, then seemed to a decision. "Shake on it," she said, holding her hand out. Barnaby saw Bob open his mouth to say something, and Helen's arm stretched to put a finger to his lips; Barnaby glanced at Kotetsu, who shrugged. The two children shook hands vigorously, then ceremoniously went about setting up the race -- a line drawn in the dirt, an agreement to run to the parking lot and back, and Kotetsu designated as the race starter. Kotetsu counted down, and on "Go," there was a sudden breeze that ruffled everyone's hair. Within ten feet, they were practically a blur; well before they'd reached the parking lot they'd vanished.
"Wait, wait, so Kaede--?" Bob asked, as Kotetsu said, "Wait, Dash has powers?"
"Bob, don't tell me you forgot," Helen protested. Over on the picnic bench, the girl ducked her head and went transparent; a heap of clothes behind a floating book. She'd been watching.
"Someone please tell me what's going on," Barnaby said calmly, once the others had stopped.
Considering that Dash had super-speed, and now so did Kaede, Barnaby was surprised they managed to finish the explanation before the kids returned, and the secondary explanation as to why Helen had let it happen -- "If you ask me, it'd do him some good to lose a race," she said. It was at least a couple of minutes before they came back, though, both somewhat out of breath.
"She cheated!" Dash complained, between gasps.
"I cheated?" Kaede objected. "You were going to race me using your powers without telling me you had them!"
"I wasn't going to use all of them like you did!"
"You were still planning to win."
"Well yeah!"
"I dunno, Kaede, it does seem kinda unfair," Kotetsu said. "You're a lot taller than him. Longer legs. With the same powers of course you're gonna beat him."
"No, no, she's not wrong," Helen said. "Dash wasn't being honest."
"I didn't lie," Dash protested.
"Kaede shouldn't get his dessert, though," Kotetsu said.
"I don't want his stupid dessert! I don't even know what it is."
"How far did you both go?" Barnaby asked.
Getting a conclusive answer to that turned out to be a challenge, but one that, entirely by accident, smoothed over the hard feelings. Neither of them could estimate the distance, and identifying landmarks took some discussion. Kaede didn't know the area well, and parts of their route been blurry to her. While Dash might have recognized familiar locations and been better equipped to recognize his surroundings at high speeds, he was too young to clearly explain what he'd seen; "the pink hospital" meant nothing to Barnaby. Bob, wanted to see if he could clear it up, and since he'd know both the local landmarks and his son's speech patterns, he seemed the best choice. Barnaby relinquished his phone, Helen and Kotetsu took over the grill, and Barnaby, feeling extraneous after he'd explained the map application, drifted over to the cement picnic table and bench.
The little girl scooted away from him, but lowered her book, and he smiled faintly. "Just pretend I'm not there," he said. "I always hated being interrupted while I was reading."
"Mom says it's rude to read when you have guests," she said.
"I'm not really your guest. Your parents' guest, maybe." Don't do it, he told himself. You hate having it done to you. But he couldn't resist. "Can I see what book you're reading?"
Mutely, she lifted it from her lap to show him the cover. A Nancy Drew mystery; the cover didn't trigger any memories, but he recognized the style. "I'm surprised to..." To see you reading such a difficult book for your age. He trailed off, awkwardly. No way to say it without sounding patronizing. How did people talk to children? Did they just not care that they were being patronizing? With Kaede, he tended to speak to Kotetsu as much as to her, and they could always roll their eyes together when he did something exasperating.
"I read above my grade level," she said, gravely.
"I can tell," he said. "I loved mysteries like that when I was your age." Had he read books that long when he was her age? Maybe he'd been older. How much of this was normal forgetfulness and how much was Maverick, and when would the SSRIs save him from the train of thought that always followed from that? He'd liked mysteries. He knew that. He'd liked the idea of young people being able to put together the pieces where the police, the adults, had failed. The reasons were painfully transparent now. If Maverick had encouraged it, encouraged the whole obsession, that didn't change the fact that the interest had started with him.
"Nancy Drew?" Violet asked skeptically. "Isn't she for girls?"
"Is there a reason boys shouldn't read her?" She put her finger in the book, apparently giving it some thought. "I read every mystery I could find," he continued. "It didn't matter who the main character was." Had he read the one she held now? Maybe he'd just never found that one; it hadn't been at the library, or bookstore, or... where had he found books when he was a child? In the silence, he tried to pull his mind off that track, away from the blanks he could never fill in, like his therapist was trying to teach him. Pay attention to what's around you, not just what's in your head.
"We have our own grill, but it's buried somewhere in the garage after the last move," Helen was telling Kotetsu. "And we figured Dash would want some room to really build up some speed, so that's why we picked the park. I wasn't really expecting him to challenge Kaede, but I guess I should have! We'd love to show you the new house, but it's a mess right now -- you know how it is when you move, boxes everywhere even six months later..." Dash and Kaede were at the starting line, again; it looked like they'd buried the hatchet over the racing arrangement. Maybe they'd settled on a handicap, because Dash ran into invisibility before Kaede did. Bob still had Barnaby's phone. Had he found the stopwatch app?
"You have powers too, right?" Violet asked, out of the blue. He looked back at her; she'd tucked her hair behind one ear and was watching him intently.
"Yes, I do," he said. "So do my partner and his daughter." My partner. Even if they weren't heroes anymore. Maybe he should stop thinking of Kotetsu that way, let him go on with his own life without the tie to someone with as many problems as Barnaby had, but no other word came close to the way he felt about the older man. None he was brave enough to use, yet.
"Do you ever forget and use your powers by accident?"
He shook his head, no, but then he realized what she was probably really wondering. "Not anymore," he amended. "When I was your age, sometimes I did, when I was upset. And when I first got my powers, I was a baby, and I used to abuse them all the time. If my mother put me in a playpen or carrier so she could do something, I'd use my powers to break out." Hundred Power, at the onset, didn't seem to have the hour-long cooldown period; Kotetsu had had the same problem in childhood, and Kaede, when she copied his powers.
"Mom says I used to vanish when I cried," Violet said. "When I was a baby. And now I can kind of...." She laid the book down on the bench next to her, face-down and open to her place, and brought her hands together. "I can make bubbles."
The sphere she created and held between her hands did indeed resemble a bubble. The transparent shimmer was more purple than any other color, not iridescent, but the effect was much the same. "Interesting," he said. "Can I touch it?" She nodded. It didn't pop at his touch; it gave a little, then bounced back, and further pressure found no give at all. It was like the resistance of a strong blast of air, not any solid surface. "A force field," he said. Like Jake's. Jake had adapted his into weapons, while Violet had, in infancy, bent hers around her to make herself invisible. "Can you make them any larger than this?"
She shook her head. "Not yet. But I'm practicing. Is that bad?"
"I don't think that's bad at all," he said. "You should know your own abilities." But she was a child, not an adult, and the US was different from Stern Bild. "You should listen to your parents, of course. If they put any restrictions on how or where you use your powers, you should abide by those. But if you're careful and you're not hurting anyone, I think you should be fine."
"I'm really careful," she said. "I only practice at home, in my room. Except for right now."
"You have a very impressive power," he said. "Very versatile."
She shook her head. "I can't do anything with the bubbles, and even when I disappear people can see my clothes."
"You're still young," he said. "Your powers are still developing."
"You think so?"
He nodded, and she smiled, shyly, ducking her head. Which had come first, he wondered, her powers or her shyness? Were personalities shaped by powers, or did people develop powers to fit their personalities? Origami with his gift for mimickry and discomfort in his own skin, Kaede learning to emulate people she admired, Shrinking Violet here using powers to conceal herself that others would use for violence.
"Food's ready," Kotetsu called out. "Once the speed demons get back, anyway."
"Should be any second--" Bob began, before his son careened into his legs. "---now."
February, 1980, Stern Bild and Burbsville
"Hey, Kotetsu. Bob's at work right now."
"No, I figured he would be. I was wanting to talk to you."
"He's not holding a grudge or anything, you know? About you being back in the business." Not that she could tell, anyway. "We joked about your five-minute retirement, sure..."
"It was a whole year! That's a long time when you're bored!"
"I know, I know." She turned off the water in the sink. Being a housewife was pretty boring, now that Dash was in preschool; it was different when she was chasing a super-speed toddler. Pretty soon he'd be going to school for full days. She'd be one of those moms who brought homemade things to all the class parties and irritated the ones with less time on their hands. "What did you need to talk about?"
"I was just, um, wondering about... Valentine's. Like, what you'd get for a guy for Valentine's."
"What do you mean?" Surely he and Tomoe had celebrated it, right? Even if they'd been pretty busy between active-duty heroing and having a young child. Was he trying to analyze an ambiguous gift from a friend? It was a little early for that, though.
"I mean... what do you usually get Bob for Valentine's Day?"
"Um," she began. For a while it had been sexy lingerie on her, but she'd had a little trouble losing the baby weight after Dash and she'd let that tradition slide for a while, much to Bob's disappointment. Then Dash developed his powers and chasing him took off a jeans size. "Why are you asking?"
"It's just, you know, I know the kind of thing I used to get Tomoe, chocolates she liked, flowers, but I don't know if it's okay to give that kind of thing to a guy, or if flowers would be too feminine or something, and I really don't want to screw this first one up because Bunny and I are kind of seeing each other now," he said, picking up speed as he went along until the last phrase came out all in a rush.
"Wow," she said. "That's... not what I was expecting! I was going to say it depends on the guy, but you weren't just asking in general, so... You know what he likes, right? I give Bob chocolates sometimes. Or bake things he likes."
"Sorry," he said. "I didn't really tell people for a long time, because it didn't matter, and now all of a sudden it, uh..."
"It's nothing to apologize for! I'm just glad you found somebody again. You seemed so lonely for such a long time." He was silent for long enough she realized he was having a hard time responding. "So this is pretty recent, huh?"
"Yeah."
"So I guess sexy lingerie is out."
"I don't even know how that would work on me."
"I'd say I have some ideas, but I'm a married woman." She smirked to herself as he spluttered. "Does he like chocolate? Flowers?"
"Not really. He doesn't really like... stuff. At all. I mean, he gets everything digital, books and movies, music, all of that. Has a built-in sound system in his apartment, so he doesn't even have a stereo."
"Hmm. Romantic dinner, then? Make reservations someplace nice?" Wait, Valentine's was only a week off. A lot of places might be booked up already. "Or cook him something at your place. Candles, music..."
"Candlelit fried rice."
"You can cook other stuff! Can't you?"
"Spaghetti? With sauce from a jar. Cold cereal?"
"Okay, catering. Mini-catering. Order take-out from someplace good and plate it up so it looks nice."
"Hmmm. Yeah, I think I know a place! Thanks, Helen. You're a lifesaver."
"No problem! Hey, is it okay if I tell Bob?"
He hesitated. "Sure. You don't think he'll be... freaked out or anything?"
"Nah." Though she might have to spend a little time hammering the whole idea of bisexuality into his head. Bob was pretty black-and-white about things sometimes. She could hear it already, but he was crazy about Tomoe, like that had to have changed. "Like I said, it's just good you've found somebody. Doesn't matter who it is. Bob worries more about you being single than I do, I think."
"Really? He never said..."
She laughed. "Men. It figures. Seriously, he'll be happy for you." Once he got the idea.
"Okay." He took a deep breath. "Thanks again. I need to go make some calls and get started cleaning, I think."
"No problem. Go get 'em, Tiger."
October, 1982, Stern Bild and Burbsville
"Hello?"
"Oh, hey, Barnaby. It's Bob Parr?"
"Oh, yes. Mr. Incredible."
Bob winced. "You have no idea how glad I am my wife can't hear you call me that right now."
"Oh. That sounds... ominous. Just a moment, here's Kotetsu."
Bob could hear, faintly, the sound of Kotetsu's "what happened?" and Barnaby saying something about "the Parrs." Of course Kaede would be his first worry. "Hey, Bob. What's wrong?"
"Another move..." Bob said, grimly, and he heard the creak of a couch as Kotetsu sat down.
"What was it this time?"
"'Bowling night' kinda blew up in my face. Well, both our faces, but Lucius and Honey don't have any kids needing to transfer schools..."
"Uh-oh."
"Sorry, I wasn't calling to dump on you. I just needed to let you know the new address, because Helen wasn't really sure where to send it -- are you and Barnaby living together yet?"
"Not quite, but thinking about it. I leave stuff at his place, he leaves stuff at mine -- you know how it is."
"It's a distant memory," Bob said. "So which address is better for mail?"
April, 1985, Metroville
HHelen had sworn that every time Bob forced them to move, notifying everyone was his job, but with their house reduced to a smoking crater, she couldn't resist. Until they picked out a new place, they wouldn't have a landline or a permanent address, so she settled for sending out an email with a photo of the wreckage, a short explanation, and their temporary contact information, to everyone who was in the loop on their old line of work.
"Kotetsu still hasn't stopped laughing," Barnaby told her, over the phone. "Something about Bob winning forever. You seem in better spirits than I would have expected."
"It looks like we might actually be cleared to come out of retirement," she said. "And at this point I'm just happy we're all alive and in one piece, you know?"
"I understand completely," he said, with feeling. "Would you like to talk to Kotetsu? If he can contain himself?" He raised his voice a bit for that last, and she heard Kotetsu's indistinct protest.
"I should really get going," she said. "My sister always worries, and I wasn't able to get hold of her earlier. Just let him know we might be back in action. Or Bob will, when we get word."
"I'll let him know."
June, 1985, Stern Bild
The Parrs were the first guests to arrive. "I hope we're not too early," Helen said, when Barnaby and Kaede let them in.
"Not at all! Kotetsu and Antonio are out back," Barnaby said. "Let me show you the house before everyone else arrives."
To Kaede, this family wasn't the set of treasured old friends her dad knew; they were a group of people she'd met once, a little kid she'd half-babysat, and a series of Christmas cards, a birth announcement, and a couple of address-change cards over the years. They were also the Incredibles, the first new (or partly-new) group of heroes to emerge since the US ban on heroics had been lifted, and that was a lot more interesting to her.
She'd known they had powers, back when she met them the last time, but either she'd missed the part where they used to be heroes, or hadn't much cared. She'd been ten or eleven back then, and the fact she'd met the Stern Bild heroes, helped save them, was still so distant and crazy it felt like a dream sometimes; she didn't just assume her dad's friends were heroes, especially since she'd no sooner learned he was a hero than he retired and moved back home.
And that had been the summer he was retired, so she was still just dealing with the fact that her dad -- her distant, lying, promise-breaking dad, who baby-talked her and forgot things and mailed her a stupid creepy Mad Bear toy after they nearly blew up the city -- was a hero who'd risked his life and gone through hell for everybody's sake, and yet he was also a big, silly kid who watched a lot of TV and bought candy bars whenever they were in a checkout line and actually cheered when he made a basket with something he threw at a trash can. Barnaby, handsome and cool and good at everything, was actually no good at a lot of things, like understanding references to TV shows or listening to music written in the last hundred years. It had been a lot to adjust to all at once, so no wonder she barely paid attention to a family with two heroes who'd retired when she was practically a baby. Dash was the main one she remembered, the way he'd latched onto her, and how it had felt to run at that speed.
But Dad and Barnaby had moved in together, and she'd be moving in with them later this summer -- she was already spending weekends in the city, helping them shop for things for her new room, convincing Dad she didn't want the same kind of canopy bed she'd had when she was like three -- and so naturally when they threw a housewarming party they invited the family Dad had been friends with since before she was born. "Literally," Dad had said, and for once he wasn't misusing the word 'literally.' "Your mom was pregnant with you when she bumped into Elastigirl."
"Really?" she'd demanded, suddenly interested, so that was when he told her a lot more of the story. It was hard to get him to talk about her mom, sometimes, so this was doubly welcome.
It was still a little hard for her to get used to. The Stern Bild heroes were all familiar to her, but the Parrs weren't, so it was hard to get used to the idea that this normal-seeming lady, the big, slightly paunchy, balding man, the girl a few years younger than her, were heroes. The baby had powers, too, apparently. And there was Dash, the age she was when she met him.
"I remember you!" he said to her, hanging back as Barnaby began the tour. "Wanna race again?"
"Not in the house," Barnaby called over his shoulder.
"Of course not in the house," she said, rolling her eyes a little. Violet giggled; she'd hung back, too.
"You can copy powers, right?" Violet asked. "Any powers?"
"Yeah. Any powers so far, anyway. I've never found any I couldn't. Why?"
"I wanted to see what you can do with mine. I'm always looking for ideas."
"Sure, I can do that!" This was a perk she hadn't considered; a new batch of powers to copy. Maybe Mrs. Incredible would be willing to let her borrow hers, too. "Yours we can do here, probably. We'll have to find a place for a race later. There's a park not far from here. You need to be careful, though, don't run off any edges. There are safety rails, but I bet they'd stand up like tissue paper at high speeds." She wasn't at all used to the Gold Stage, and Dash had probably never been here before, even if they'd been to Stern Bild. It was mostly a fancy residential area, with some upscale shops -- not the kind of thing tourists brought hyperactive kids to see.
"We saw that when we were coming in," Dash said. "Why's it built like that? It's really cool, but why?"
"Some of it's because of space, I know. We learned about it in history class. They started building up the stages back around the turn of the century, and they finished the Gold Stage back in the forties or so... I may not have been paying too much attention." They were both watching her, listening to her explanation. She kind of felt like the cool older sister all of a sudden. That'd probably last until Dragon Kid and Blue Rose showed up, so she should make the most of it while she could. "I don't remember the exact date, but I remember there was a black and white picture of Mr. Legend cutting the ribbon for the first tram ride up to the Gold Stage. And because of my dad I know when Mr. Legend started."
"I wonder if that's why our dad picked his name," Violet said. "Mr. Legend, Mr. Incredible... I need a hero name. I don't like Shrinking Violet."
"It sounds a lot like Ms. Violet from the Second League," Kaede said. "But her powers are nothing like yours."
"And it makes it sound like your power is to get really tiny," Dash added, and Violet shot him a look.
"Maybe, like, See-Through?" Kaede suggested. "Transparency?"
"Hmmm..."
"Do mine next!" Dash demanded. "Or do mine first! Mine's easier."
"Prism?" Kaede suggested. "I don't see how yours is easier. Flash is already taken and Dash is your real name."
"I like Prism!"
Kotetsu and Bob were sitting by the grill, letting Antonio handle the actual grilling. Helen was over by the patio with Bunny, Sky High and Blue Rose; the baby was a big draw, it turned out. Bunny was supposedly just being a host, but when Blue Rose passed him the baby, he took him over tentatively; Kotetsu watched, only halfway listening to Bob, as his partner -- still the best word they had -- gradually relaxed, bouncing the kid slightly. Seeing a smile spread out over Bunny's face was one of his favorite sights in the world.
Yeah, they'd be reviving the adoption discussion tonight, he figured. Good time for it, with Kaede here. See how she felt about babies after this. She was inside with the older Parr kids, at the moment, or maybe giving someone else the tour of the house, since he'd heard the doorbell ring earlier; he wasn't sure whether or not she should try holding Jack-Jack, whose array of powers sounded pretty scary. She didn't usually have a lot of control when she first got her hands on an ability, though she and Barnaby both swore up and down she was getting better. And it might actually be good to have someone who was able to talk try out the baby's powers, so Bob and Helen weren't constantly getting surprised. Helen's bright "he keeps us on our toes!" had sounded kind of forced.
And Kaede did have better control of her base power, now. She didn't automatically copy everyone she touched anymore. Maybe she could just hold the baby without bursting into flames or flying or anything. That might be best.
"So maybe I should have thought it was too good to be true, but at a time like that, it looked more like too good to pass up."
"You didn't think to ask anybody about it? See if it checked out?"
"It was all hush-hush, top-secret stuff! I didn't tell Lucius, I didn't even tell Helen! Now I know why they set it up that way, but at the time I took them at their word."
"You know, this Syndrome guy," Antonio said. "You said he made that Omnidroid thing, he made weapons, set it up so he could fly?"
"Rockets, too. All kinds of gadgets."
"That sounds kinda... familiar. Don't you think, Kotetsu?"
"Wait. Like..." He looked around, but he probably couldn't lower his voice enough for Bunny not to hear the word. "Like Ouroboros?" he said, lowering his voice anyway. Sure enough, Bunny's smile faded almost instantly, and Jack-Jack started to fuss. Bunny's eyes met Kotetsu's, and Kotetsu tried to smile reassuringly. I swear I'll fill you in, he mouthed, which probably accomplished very little -- Bunny couldn't seem to read lips worth a damn, at least not his -- but seemed to do the trick anyway. He went back to bouncing Jack-Jack on his hip, and the baby calmed down quickly.
"Yeah. The robots, the powered suits, things like that? Not necessarily that he was working for them directly, but he might have sold them equipment."
"I couldn't tell you, but I might be able to help," Bob said. "His second-in-command, Mirage, helped us get back home at the end. I don't know if the contact number I had for her is any good now, but I'm pretty sure I know people who can get in touch with her. If anyone would have that kind of info she'd be the one."
"Thanks, Bob. It'd mean a lot to Bunny. Both of us," he amended. He couldn't remember exactly how much of the story he'd passed along, or how much the Parrs would have remembered, but "Ouroboros killed his parents" was pretty well-known. Kaede stepped out onto the porch, leading Dragon Kid and Origami outside; Dragon Kid made a beeline for the baby, and Kotetsu grinned.
"Happy to help," Bob said. "I can't even tell you how good it is to be back in action, and with my whole family -- I dunno, maybe it's irresponsible, but knowing we can all count on each other, it's like-- It feels great."
"No, I know exactly what you mean," Kotetsu said. The family he counted on was just a bit bigger.
